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i read somewhere that some people may not like referring to britain as the default 'reference point' for timezones due to political/cultural reasons of their country. personally i dont have an issue with it, and i'm not saying that's the case here, maybe the author just likes iceland?

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The UK developed the first portable timepiece good enough to accurately tell longitude. It's theirs.

The French didn't like it, but were outvoted. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Confere...

To be slightly more accurate: in the 1880s, the British Empire had the preeminent navy and thus the preeminent naval charts. While other countries (including the US) maintained more local meridians for doing geodetic surveys of their own countries, it was the Greenwich Meridian that tended to dominate naval charts, which meant that it was more or less a de facto standard anyways by the Meridian Conference.

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