The International Meridian Conference of 1884 selected the meridian through Greenwich as an important reference for calculating longitude. The line at zero degrees is a convention, rather than a naturally occurring boundary.
The choice reflected the use of nautical charts and observational records at the time. Today's satellite-positioning reference also differs slightly from the historic astronomical marker.
Choosing a common meridian
Before the establishment of a common international prime meridian, most maritime countries established their own prime meridians, usually passing through the national observatory or other landmark in the country in question. In January 1851, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich established the prime meridian for Great Britain.
In the 19th century, astronomers and geodesists were concerned with questions of longitude and time, because they were responsible for determining them scientifically and used them continually in their studies. The International Geodetic Association, which had covered Europe with a network of fundamental longitudes, took an interest in the question of an internationally-accepted prime meridian at its seventh general conference in Rome in 1883. Indeed, the Association was already providing administrations with the bases for topographical surveys, and engineers with the fundamental benchmarks for their levelling. It seemed natural that it should contribute to the achievement of significant progress in navigation, cartography and geography, as well as in the service of major communications institutions, railways and telegraphs. From a scientific point of view, to be a candidate for the status of international prime meridian, the proponent needed to satisfy three important criteria.
According to the report by Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero, it must have a first-rate astronomical observatory, be directly linked by astronomical observations to other nearby observatories, and be attached to a network of first-rate triangles in the surrounding country. Four major observatories could satisfy these requirements: Greenwich, Paris, Berlin and Washington. The conference concluded that Greenwich Observatory best corresponded to the geographical, nautical, astronomical and cartographic conditions that guided the choice of an international prime meridian, and recommended the governments should adopt it as the world standard. The Conference further hoped that, if the whole world agreed on the unification of longitudes and times by the Association's choosing the Greenwich meridian, Great Britain might respond in favour of the unification of weights and measures, by adhering to the Metre Convention.
In 1884, the International Meridian Conference (of government representatives) took place in Washington, D.C. to establish an internationally-recognised single meridian. The meridian chosen was that which passed through the Airy transit circle at Greenwich, and it became the prime meridian of the world for a century. In 1984 it was superseded in that role by the IERS Reference Meridian which, at this latitude, runs about 102 metres to the east of the Greenwich meridian.
At around the time of the 1884 conference, scientists were making measurements to determine the deflection of the vertical on a large scale. One might expect that plumb lines set up in various locations, if extended downward, would all pass through a single point, the centre of Earth, but this is not the case, primarily due to Earth being an ellipsoid, not a sphere. The downward extended plumb lines don't even all intersect the rotation axis of Earth; this much smaller effect is due to the uneven distribution of Earth's mass. To make computations feasible, scientists defined ellipsoids of revolution, more closely emulating the shape of Earth, modified for a particular zone; a published ellipsoid would be a good base line for measurements.
The difference between the direction of a plumb line or vertical, and a line perpendicular to the surface of the ellipsoid of revolution – a normal to said ellipsoid – at a particular observatory, is the deflection of the vertical.