Rhine rethink

Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily reported on Saturday that a chance discovery by a biologist at the University of Cologne had uncovered the error.

The Rhine, an important transport link, runs along Germany's western border.

Bruno Kremer noticed that in texts from the first half of the last century, the river was recorded as having a length of 1,230 kilometers. But in the last few decades, that number has mysteriously changed to 1,320 kilometers.

"It must have been caused by a simple transposition of digits," Kremer told the paper. "Around about 1960 someone transposed 1,230 to 1,320." Instead of checking the figure with an authoritative source, subsequent publishers appear to have simply copied the figure into new reference materials, further spreading the error.

Source difficult to pin down

Kremer only noticed the discrepancy by chance, and then checked the length himself by adding all the sectional distances together. He admitted that his measurement could still be off by a kilometer or two, depending on where one defines the source of the river, but said a difference of nearly 100 kilometers simply didn't make sense.

Government agencies and publishers have been shocked by the discovery. "They weren't too happy," said Kremer.

But the federal institute of hydrology and the Rhine Museum in Koblenz have confirmed his finding.

“We also have the number 1,320 in our publications, although we put a big question mark against that internally,” Alfred Hommes, spokesman for the federal institute for hydrology, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

German encyclopedia publisher Brockhaus plans to correct the error in its next edition.

cmk/dpa
Editor: Sonia Phalnikar