The term centre of minimum distance[1] specifies the concept more precisely as the domain is the sphere surface without boundary and not the three-dimensional body.
In 1864, Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, gave in his book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid the coordinates with 30°00′N 31°00′E / 30.000°N 31.000°E / 30.000; 31.000 (Geographical centre of all land surfaces on Earth (Smyth 1864)), the location of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
[3][4] He stated that this had been calculated by "carefully summing up all the dry land habitable by man all the wide world over".
[3] In October of that year, Smyth proposed to position the prime meridian at the longitude of the Great Pyramid because there it would "pass over more land than [at] any other [location]".
Woods, a physicist with Gulf Energy and Environmental Systems in San Diego, California, used a digital global map and calculated the coordinates on a mainframe system as 39°00′N 34°00′E / 39.000°N 34.000°E / 39.000; 34.000 (Geographical centre of all land surfaces on Earth (Woods 1973)), in Turkey, near the district of Kırşehir, Seyfe Village approx.