AHC/WI: International Date Line at the 30th Meridian West?

An interesting idea for a challenge I had. What if the International Date Line was at what we'd call the 30th Meridian West? POD is preferably after the OTL discovery of the America but anything goes after that.

Bonus points awarded if the POD is after the founding of Jamestown, and if the *Australian location in which the Prime Meridian runs thru happens to be in, or within walking distance of, a major city. :cool:
 
An interesting idea for a challenge I had. What if the International Date Line was at what we'd call the 30th Meridian West? POD is preferably after the OTL discovery of the America but anything goes after that.

Bonus points awarded if the POD is after the founding of Jamestown, and if the *Australian location in which the Prime Meridian runs thru happens to be in, or within walking distance of, a major city. :cool:
????

Seems like an awfully random place for it.

Prime meridians are chosen to be convenient for the primary naval/exploring power. France had theirs based on Paris, Britain on London. Obviously the British one won out OTL.

To get a Prime Meridian at 150 E, you'd need a capital city really near it, and the only believable location would be between Sydney and Canberra.

So. The world's dominant sea-faring, exploring and colonial power is Australia? With a national observatory near OTL's Canberra. ???

Only way I see THAT happening is in a post-nuclear war scenario, where Australia is the only surviving first world power.
 
????

Seems like an awfully random place for it.

Prime meridians are chosen to be convenient for the primary naval/exploring power. France had theirs based on Paris, Britain on London. Obviously the British one won out OTL.

To get a Prime Meridian at 150 E, you'd need a capital city really near it, and the only believable location would be between Sydney and Canberra.

So. The world's dominant sea-faring, exploring and colonial power is Australia? With a national observatory near OTL's Canberra. ???

Only way I see THAT happening is in a post-nuclear war scenario, where Australia is the only surviving first world power.

Maybe, but didn't it take until 1884 IOTL to actually finalize that?(I realize that it was very much a proposition well before then, though). One scenario I had in mind was an a slightly earlier, and quite a bit faster colonization of *Australia, and a somehow successful *1848 style rebellion in Britain proper(not necessarily in 1848 however, or even necessarily eliminating the monarchy altogether), and the establishment faction flees to Australia. It also involves China not losing as much power and influence as it did IOTL. At some point, an international conference is held, and what would have been the 150th meridian is chosen as a compromise, partly not to piss off the Chinese, but also to please the British Empire, now primarily being run from eastern *Australia.
 
Isn't the international date chosen because it runs through presisely nothing so it wouldnt confuse people if they have to go from one side to the other inside a country at least thats why it is in the middle of the pacific right?

Im assuming you mean the prime meridian in which case how would the number one power of the time be based out of barely settled Australia unless your going back so far it doesnt matter and the entire world is unrecognizable.
 
Isn't the international date chosen because it runs through presisely nothing so it wouldnt confuse people if they have to go from one side to the other inside a country at least thats why it is in the middle of the pacific right?

I would suspect so myself, yes. Though TBH, as far as I've checked, the 30th meridian only runs thru Greenland and the Azores and that's really about it.

Im assuming you mean the prime meridian in which case how would the number one power of the time be based out of barely settled Australia unless your going back so far it doesnt matter and the entire world is unrecognizable.

We could perhaps work with a POD in the late 18th century: again, maybe Australia gets settled earlier and Britain suffers thru an *1848 analogue of it's own.
 
There's no real requirement for the International Date Line to be directly across the world from the Prime Meridian. IOTL we got lucky in that the world center of navigation (London) was directly across the world from a pretty nice place for a temporal discontinuity (the mid-Pacific). Even so, we've tweaked the IDL based on political considerations (most egregiously, Kiribati).

So you don't need a coordinate system based in eastern Australia to get a date line in the Atlantic. What would apparently be necessary is a situation in which trans-Pacific social ties are stronger than trans-Atlantic ones, which seems unlikely in a world dominated by Europe. The Atlantic crossing is a pretty natural route for development in such a situation.

So, bearing that in mind, here's my attempt.

The French Revolutionary calendar proves successful somehow, managing to take over all of western Europe, including Britain. Consequently, when eastern Europe adopts the Gregorian calendar, it does so in such a way that the Russian Far East (which, I suppose, could be better-developed ITTL to facilitate this) ends up on the same date as its neighbors in America. If the Revolutionary calendar then dies out--for my purposes, I hope in an east-to-west direction--we would have Europe and the Americas offset by a day.
 
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