This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to London
To a navigator, time and distance are tightly linked. Earth turns 360 degrees on its axis every 24 hours. This means that a person standing on the equator travels east one degree of longitude, approximately 111km, every four minutes. People have long realised that the passage of the sun, stars and other bodies across the sky caused by rotation represented — with careful observation and some neat calculations — a reliable method both for timekeeping and determining a location on Earth’s surface.
Encouraged by my father-in-law, who was an air force navigator, I learnt how to navigate in 1999 as part of a long-held dream to train for my private pilot’s licence. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by the diverse mix of geography, astronomy, mechanics, maths and history at navigation’s heart.
Although today the Royal Observatory Greenwich, in south-east London, is an excellent museum, for almost 300 years the site was a centre for astronomical and navigational observations and research. Its handsome buildings, some of them Grades I- and II-listed and one, Flamsteed House, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, sit on top of a hill in Greenwich Park commanding beautiful unobstructed views of — as well as the nig...
[Short citation of 8% of the original article]