In 1884 , at the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC , the Greenwich meridian was adopted as the prime meridian of the world . San Domingo , now the Dominican Republic , voted against . France and Brazil abstained . The United Kingdom acceded to the Metre Convention in 1884 and to the International Geodetic Association in 1898 . In 1911 , Alexander Ross Clarke and Friedrich Robert Helmert stated in the Encyclopædia Britannica : " According to the calculations made at the central bureau of the international association on the great meridian arc extending from the Shetland Islands , through Great Britain , France and Spain to El Aghuat in Algeria , '' a '' the equatorial radius of the earth = 6377935 metres , the ellipticity being assumed as 1/299 .15 . ... The net does not follow the meridian exactly , but deviates both to the west and to the east ; actually , the meridian of Greenwich is nearer the mean than that of Paris ( Helmert , '' Grösse d. Erde '' ) . " The French clung to the Paris meridian as a rival to Greenwich until 1911 for timekeeping purposes and 1914 for navigation . To this day , French cartographers continue to indicate the Paris meridian on some maps
International Meridian Conference
International Meridian Conference
Paris meridian