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Notes
- 1.
Seen from above, France has the outline of a hexagon, with two opposite corners to the north and the south. To the west, running roughly north-south from Brittany to the Spanish border, is the Atlantic coast of the Bay of Biscay. To the north-west, from Brittany to the Netherlands, is the coast of the English Channel, or, as the French understandably prefer to call it, La Manche (the Sleeve). To the north-east, the hexagon's side runs along the borders of the neighbouring countries from the Netherlands, to northern Germany. To the east, the border continues southwards to the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean coast forms the south-east side of the hexagon, and the border with Spain completes it to the south-west. In French, the country of France is sometimes metaphorically referred to as the Hexagone, because of this shape.
- 2.
In the English language the word meridian means the line running north-south through the poles, however determined and for whatever purpose. The French language distinguishes between le méridien and la méridienne, the former being the abstract line of points of the same longitude and the latter being a real line. Une méridienne can serve as a baseline for geographic measurements, as in this book, or it may be the visible line of a sundial showing noon local time.i Une méridienne is oriented along un méridien.
- 3.
Culminate in astronomy or astrology means of a star “to reach its highest point in the sky” (from the astronomical meaning is derived the general meaning of the word “to reach an acme of development”).
- 4.
The position of a star at its highest elevation lies in the south if you are in the northern hemisphere, as in France. In the southern hemisphere it would be in the north.
- 5.
You would think that geometry (from geo- earth and —metria measuring) would be the relevant word, and in early times it might have been, more so than now. Geometry was associated with the practical art of measuring and planning and was used especially in connection with architecture. But by the seventeenth century it had come to mean the properties of spaces, including lines and surfaces, and had taken on its present mathematical meaning. Geodesy (from geo- earth and -daiein divide) came into English to mean the measuring of land, and in the nineteenth century it developed its modern meaning of the branch of applied mathematics that relates to the figure of large areas of land and Earth as a whole.
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Murdin, P. (2009). The Incroyable Pique-nique and the Méridienne Verte . In: Full Meridian of Glory. Copernicus, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75534-2_1
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