Title: Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system - Wikipedia
Headings: Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system
Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system
Contents
History
Definitions
UTM zone
Overlapping grids
Latitude bands
Latitude bands
Notation
Exceptions
Locating a position using UTM coordinates
Simplified formulae
From latitude, longitude (φ, λ) to UTM coordinates (E, N)
From UTM coordinates (E, N, Zone, Hemi) to latitude, longitude (φ, λ)
See also
References
Further reading

Content: For areas within the contiguous United States the Clarke Ellipsoid of 1866 was used. For the remaining areas of Earth, including Hawaii, the International Ellipsoid was used. The World Geodetic System WGS84 ellipsoid is now generally used to model the Earth in the UTM coordinate system, which means current UTM northing at a given point can differ up to 200 meters from the old. For different geographic regions, other datum systems can be used. Prior to the development of the Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system, several European nations demonstrated the utility of grid-based conformal maps by mapping their territory during the interwar period. Calculating the distance between two points on these maps could be performed more easily in the field (using the Pythagorean theorem) than was possible using the trigonometric formulas required under the graticule-based system of latitude and longitude. In the post-war years, these concepts were extended into the Universal Transverse Mercator/ Universal Polar Stereographic (UTM/UPS) coordinate system, which is a global (or universal) system of grid-based maps. The transverse Mercator projection is a variant of the Mercator projection, which was originally developed by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator, in 1570. This projection is conformal, which means it preserves angles and therefore shapes across small regions. However, it distorts distance and area.