The Fife town of St Andrews has staked a claim to unseat Greenwich as the place where time began.
The 17th Century Scottish astronomer and scientific pioneer James Gregory laid down a meridian line across the floor of his lab at St Andrews University in 1673, almost 200 years before the Greenwich Meridian was established and arbitrarily adopted as the world’s official prime meridian.
Now St Andrews has recognised Gregory’s remarkable body of work with a permanent public memorial a solid brass line which follows exactly the line of his meridian and bisects the pavement in South Street, St Andrews.
As the brass meridian and plaque were unveiled at the site of Gregory’s lab in the King James Library this week, it emerged that St Andrews, and not London, was the place where the world’s hemispheres were first divided.
Gregory’s Scottish meridian runs several degrees west of the Greenwich meridian and almost 12 minutes behind GMT.
The discovery has far reaching implications for Scots – for over three centuries, they’ve been turning up for work 12 minutes too early, pubs and polling stations have been closing much earlier than they should, traffic wardens may have been too hasty issuing tickets and referees have been blowing for full-time long before the fat lady sings.
*For more on this astonishing time-bending tale don’t miss Thursday’s Courier or try our digital edition.