Abstract
There is no clear picture in the international historiography of Brazil's participation at the International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington of 1884. In Brazil there exists the prevailing interpretation that the Brazilian vote accompanied France for reasons of subordination. This work seeks to analyze this interpretation, by scrutinizing unpublished sources on the subject, such as the letters exchanged by Luiz Cruls both with the emperor and with his wife, as well as news articles in journals, annals and reports. In this article, an approach to the history of science was adopted that was concerned with the processes of institutionalization of astronomy in Brazil in the midst of a worldwide debate on the standardization and universalization of science.
Highlights
There is no clear picture in the international historiography of Brazil’s participation at the International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington of 1884
The difficulty for establishing zero longitude lies in the fact that there is no distinct starting point on the meridian lines starting from the poles to the east-west positions
There was a tendency to favor the adoption of the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian because of the widespread use of the Nautical Almanac produced by that observatory
Summary
Astronomy in the Brazilian Empire: longitude, an international congress and the quest for a universal science in the late nineteenth century. Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, v.26, n.1, jan.-mar.
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