Ecuador 1949 – Equatorial line
monument
This monument marking the position of the
equator was built in 1936 at San Antonio de Pichincha, about 20
km (12 miles) north of Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Its
construction commemorated the 200th anniversary of the arrival
of a French-led expedition whose purpose was nothing less than
to determine the shape of the Earth. To achieve this, they
measured the length of a degree of latitude at the equator for
comparison with the length of a degree measured near the poles.
The results established that the Earth bulges at the equator
due to its rotation, as Isaac Newton had predicted from his
theory of gravity. The equatorial line monument is 10 metres
high, its four sides are oriented north, south, west and east,
and it is surmounted by a globe of the Earth. The monument
appeared again on another Ecuadorian stamp in 1953, while the expedition itself was commemorated by
a set of stamps issued in 1936.
In 1979 this original monument was moved 7
km west to the town of Calacalí and was replaced at San
Antonio de Pichincha by a new one, of similar design but 30 m
high. The location of this new monument is called Mitad del
Mundo (Middle of the World), although accurate measurements
from GPS satellites show that the true equator passes about 250
metres to the north of it.
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