General
The grid is based on the OSGB36 datum (Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936, based on the Airy 1830 ellipsoid), and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962.
The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain; more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS (the Airy ellipsoid assumes the Earth to be about 1 km smaller in diameter than the GRS80 ellipsoid, and to be slightly less flattened). The maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin (the "true" origin) at 49° N, 2° W (an offshore point in the English Channel which lies between the island of Jersey and the French port of St. Malo). Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight line grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin (to eliminate negative numbers), creating a 700 km by 1300 km grid. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly. The distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are only aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W (OSGB36) and approx. 2° 0′ 5″ W (WGS 84).
OSGB 36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS 84 has been used.
A geodetic transformation between OSGB 36 and other terrestrial reference systems (like ITRF2000, ETRS89, or WGS 84) can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true. The definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy.
Read more about this topic: Ordnance Survey National Grid
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