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111,111.1 meters is reliably 1 degree of latitude

Algorithm for offsetting a latitude/longitude by some amount of meters

https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/2964/5599

I'm looking for an algorithm which when given a latitude and longitude pair and a vector translation in meters in Cartesian coordinates (x,y) would give me a new coordinate. Sort of like a reverse

Algorithm for offsetting a latitude/longitude by some amount of meters

There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.

2 comments

eeltech

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Incidentally, these magic numbers of 111,111 are easy to remember by knowing some history: the French originally defined the meter so that 10^7 meters would be the distance along the Paris meridian from the equator to the north pole. Thus, 10^7 / 90 = 111,111.1 meters equals one degree of latitude to within the capabilities of French surveyors two centuries ago.

So its not just a coincidence, it was defined that way!

supanovadova

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I routinely use this in my job, but look at the 0.000001 degree of it.