
A Brief History of Null Island - shawndumas
http://seagor.tumblr.com/post/59492652116/a-brief-history-of-null-island
======
david-given
Important but missing context:

\---snip---

Null Island is a fictional island in the Gulf of Guinea added to the Natural
Earth public domain map dataset,[1] located where the equator crosses the
prime meridian, at coordinates 0°N 0°E.[2][3] Natural Earth describes the
entity as a "1 meter square island" with "scale rank 100, indicating it should
never be shown in mapping."[1] Although intended humorously, the fiction has a
serious purpose and is used by mapping systems to trap errors.

\---snip---

(Wikipedia.)

~~~
crystalmeph
For anyone who's curious about what it means to "trap errors" in a mapping
system, I found this on [http://www.naturalearthdata.com/blog/natural-earth-
version-1...](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/blog/natural-earth-
version-1-3-release-notes/):

Being centered at 0,0 (zero latitude, zero longitude) it is useful for
flagging geocode failures which are routed to 0,0 by most mapping services.

------
tonylxc
I suppose the NullPointerException is totally legal on this island.

------
mmphosis
[https://www.google.ca/maps/@0,0,10z/data=!3m1!1e3](https://www.google.ca/maps/@0,0,10z/data=!3m1!1e3)

------
banku_brougham
Whar ken a git one o them blue t shirts depicted in the photo?

~~~
ccvannorman
[http://www.customink.com/designs/nullisland/jmd0-00ae-
ag03/t...](http://www.customink.com/designs/nullisland/jmd0-00ae-ag03/twt)

~~~
banku_brougham
aha - thank you very much.

