Why GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) has been chosen as the basic time?

Answer 1

Because Greenwich is where the Royal Observatory is. a more bookish explantion is belwo:
In 1675 King Charles II appointed John Flamsteed as the first Astronomer Royal to provide astronomical data for use by the Royal Navy. The Kings astronomer needed an observatory and so one was built at Greenwich. When away from land, Sailors find their position by taking the baring of a star, but the stars move across the sky during the night (actually the earth turns beneath them). To get their position they need to know the exact position of the star, at the time they took the baring. This information is given in books called navigational tables. So it is very important that sailors know what the time is, but the mechanical clocks they had did not keep time, because of the motion of the ship. In 1761 a man called John Harrison won a competition by making a clock which was accurate to 1/5th of a second a day, even at sea. From now on sailors could reliably find their exact position while out at sea.

As time went by, travelling long distances became less dangerous, so people traveled more and trade routes developed. New inventions like the steam train (1815) and the telegraph (1831) improved communications and the fact that different places were using different times started to become a real problem. So in 1884 twenty-five different nations held a conference in Washington DC, to discuss what to do. They split the world up into time zones and twenty-two nations voted to use the local time at Greenwich as the base time for the rest of the world.

Answer 2

Good question, the world should all work off of American time as measured in NYC and Washington, DC as the 0 hr/0 degrees longitude/prime meridian! Actually, no, that'd never work, but it was a nice idea... Go America! We rock!

Damien, 0 degrees latitude is the Equator....

Answer 3

When the time zones were set, Britain has a huge influence over many countries of the world, particularly for trading.
Greenwich is a place near London in England, so that was picked.

Answer 4

it is at o latitude and to run the world the standrd time has to be choosen, it is said that at this point, where gmt is taken, the world can be divided into 2 half

Answer 5

It's at 0' latitude.











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Answer 6

that is where the prime meridian line