The Eastern Hemisphere is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that is east of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, England, United Kingdom) and west of 180° longitude. It is also used to refer to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia, vis-à-vis the Western Hemisphere, which includes the Americas. In addition, it may be used in a cultural or geopolitical sense as a synonym for 'Old World'.
The line demarcating the eastern and western hemispheres is an arbitrary convention, unlike the equator (an imaginary line encircling the Earth, equidistant from its poles) which divides the northern and southern hemispheres. The Prime Meridian at 0° longitude and the Antimeridian, at 180° longitude are the conventionally accepted boundaries, since they divide eastern longitudes from western longitudes. This convention was established in 1884 at the International Meridian Conference held in Washington, D.C. where the Standard Time concepts of Canadian railroad engineer Sir Sanford Fleming were adopted. Using this demarcation puts portions of western Europe, Africa and eastern Russia in the western hemisphere, thereby diluting its usefulness for cartography, as well as for geopolitical constructs, since all of Eurasia and Africa are typically included in the eastern hemisphere. Consequently, the meridians of 20°W and the diametrically opposed 160°E are often used, which includes all of the European and African mainlands, but also includes a small portion of northeast Greenland (typically reckoned as part of North America) and excludes more of eastern Russia and Oceania (e.g., New Zealand). Prior to the global adoption of Standard Time, numerous Prime Meridians were decreed by various countries where time was defined by local noon (thereby, local meridian).
The land mass of the Eastern Hemisphere is larger than that of the Western Hemisphere and has a wide variety of habitats.
Famous quotes containing the words eastern and/or hemisphere:
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)