A vivid description of one of the most ambitious scientific projects undertaken in the 19th century, and the men who undertook the measurement of the Himalayas and the mapping of the Indian subcontinent: William Lambton and George Everest.The graphic story of the measurement of a meridian, or longitudinal, arc extending from the tip of the Indian subcontinent to the mountains of the Himalayas.Much the longest such measurement hitherto made, it posed horrendous technical difficulties, made impossible physical demands on the survey parties (jungle, tigers, mountains etc.), and took over 50 years. But the scientific results were commensurate, including the discovery of the world’s highest peaks and a new calculation of the curvature of the earth’s surface.The Indian Mutiny of 1857 triggered a massive construction of roads, railways, telegraph lines and canals throughout India: all depended heavily on the accuracy of the maps which the Great Arc had made possible.
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John Keay. The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India was Mapped and Everest was Named
THE GREAT ARC. The Dramatic Taleof how India was Mappedand Everest was Named. JOHN KEAY
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
List of Maps
A Note on Spellings
Foreword
ONE A Baptism of Fever
TWO The Elusive Lambton
THREE Tall Tales from the Hills
FOUR Droog Dependent
FIVE The Far-Famed Geodesist
SIX Everywhere in Chains
SEVEN Crossing the Rubicon
EIGHT So Far as Our Knowledge Extends
NINE Through the Haze of Hindustan
TEN Et in Arcadia
ELEVEN A Stupendous Snowy Mass
A Note on Sources
Index
About the Author
Praise
By the Same Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
For Julia
That on the summit whither thou art bound
.....
About the Publisher
To one like Everest who happened to have been baptised (and so probably born) in the London parish of Greenwich, meridians must early have meant something. Greenwich had been the site of England’s Royal Observatory since the seventeenth century. British navigators and surveyors regarded the Greenwich meridian, or ‘mid-day’ line (because at any point along a north – south meridian the sun reaches its zenith at the same time), as the zero from which they calculated all longitudinal distances and from which on maps and charts they extended the graticule, or grid, of the globe’s 360 degrees of longitude. Later in the nineteenth century this British convention would win international approval. Greenwich Mean Time would become established as a world standard and the Greenwich meridian would be universally recognised as o degrees longitude. It became, in fact, the north – south equivalent of the east – west equator at o degrees latitude.
