Angles Are Measured in Degrees Term Paper

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According to Darula and Kittler:

In the 3rd century BC Alexandria became the centre of civilisation, and it was able to collect the knowledge of Sumer, Babylon, Egypt and Greece, mingled with Persian inventions. This first 'global' Mediterranean culture produced the standard calendar adopted by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, following the system used in Egypt since 238 BC, introduced by Ptolemy III Euergetes on the suggestion of his son's teacher Erasthenes. This so-called Julian calendar is still in use, although the Christian dating has been in existence only since 532 AD. (142).

The basis for angles likewise being measured in degree, minutes and seconds was a new Sumerian-invented lightweight wheel that was supported by three sticks and roped together at its axis to divide a circle into 60 degree; this innovation resulted in sexagesimal measurements of angles within a full 360 degree circle (Darula & Kittler 142).

For example, the number 360 can be divided by all numbers from 1 to 10, except 7, as well as by their ten-times multiples; in 170 BC, the Greek geographer Hypsicles first proposed using latitude and longitude, expressed in degrees, to reflect the location of a place on the spherical Earth's surface (Darula & Kittler 142). By 300 B.C., the Greeks had began using astronomical calculations to develop the first three reference lines circling the earth: the equator and the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn; Eratosthenes then added a number of east -- west latitude lines, and situated them such that they ran through familiar places.

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For example, Darula and Kittler note that, "In those days Rhodes was taken as the zero degree of longitude angle (now located at the Greenwich observatory" (142). By 200 B.C., Hipparchus reasoned that these lines should be truly parallel, and "obedient only to the geometry of the planet and not to the important places of man. He also devised a system of longitude lines encompassing 360 degrees and running north -- south from pole to pole" (Barnett 114). Ptolemy acknowledged that this system of coordinates was effective and refined and then codified it; in addition, he mandated that all maps should be drawn to scale, and subdivided the 360 degrees of both latitude and longitude lines into smaller segments: sixty minutes to a degree and sixty seconds to a minute (Barnett 114). According to Norman (1959), "When the whole subject was extended and codified by Ptolemy of Alexandria (c. AD 130), the division of the complete circle into 360 degrees of arc, and of its radius linearly into 60 'parts,' must have appeared the most satisfactory arrangement for convenience of calculation" (24). Thereafter, in 146 BC, Hipparchos, on the island of Rhodes, established the trigonometric relationships involved in these calculations and developed tables for angular proportions that are comparable to contemporary sine tables (Darula & Kittler 142).

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