Longitude lines were discovered first. The Viking explorers crossed so many of them
that they couldn't help noticing as they crossed them. They eventually learned to
count the lines as they slipped noiselessly under the keel of their boat, and thereby
to gauge their eastward/westward progress on their many voyages in both directions
between their homelands and what was to later become North America.
With the rise of the popularity of thinking, and the growth in numbers of those who
enjoyed it so much that they never actually went anywhere or did anything, there
arose among them a theoretical hypothetical philosophical question: Considering
the density and regularity of the by-now-familiar lines of longitude, could it be that
an entirely new and perpendicular set of lines existed, perfectly orthogonal to the
known set, which had never been noticed simply because the seafarers of the time
had not yet crossed any ?
Expeditions of investigation and experiment were mounted, staffed mainly by
lower-case vikings who loved to sail in the abstract but were petrified of losing
sight of land. These were the ones largely written off by the true explorers, the
ones who had never earned their second horn, and never sailed more than a
few bathtubwidths from any west coast. They were the ones most motivated
to accomplish something ... anything ... that involved sailing but did not require
following the setting sun. They were enlisted, supplied, provisioned, and chartered
to put to sea, then to keep the coast at their left hand and the Pole Star at their
back, to sail until their lutefisk melted and turned green, and all the while to keep
watch over the gunwales for lines that might cross their path.
The results, of course, were at once both instantaneous and historic, as these
erstwhile Norsk nebishes brought back their tales of great numbers of lines, thickets
of lines, tangles of lines, all new, and every one perpendicular to all of the heretofore
familiar ones.
Those, we know now, were the lines of latitude, unknown until the dreamers began
to search for them, and finally found, hundreds of years after the longitude lines.
It does not matter whether you look at the lines of latitude or longitude first. Usually coordinates are written latitude, then longitude. Good luck!
Each 'meridian' is a line of constant longitude.
Lines of latitude and longitude allows any position on the Earth to be plotted.
longitude
Most maps will show latitude and longitude lines, if not, they're ALWAYS on a globe.
It does not matter whether you look at the lines of latitude or longitude first. Usually coordinates are written latitude, then longitude. Good luck!
latitude?
lines of latitude
Each 'meridian' is a line of constant longitude.
Latitude.
Every meridian of longitude is perpendicular to every parallel of latitude, and every parallel of latitude is perpendicular to every meridian of longitude.
The lines that intercept latitude lines are lines of longitude.
Latitude and longitude
Lines of Longitude
Longitude lines go vertically and latitude lines go horizontally.
Every parallel of latitude crosses every meridian of longitude.
Lines of latitude and longitude allows any position on the Earth to be plotted.