The story begins in 1802 with the beginning of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. The survey was government department within British India's bureaucratic Leviathan. This was an exploration led by a British man named William Lambton, in an effort to map the continent of India. No scientific undertaking on such a massive scale had previously been attempted. In order to get exact measurements, Lambton used a method known as Triangulation. This means triangle-ing', or conceiving three mutually visible reference points, usually on prominent hills or landforms, as the corners of a triangle. Knowing the exact distance between two of these points, and then measuring at each point the angles made by their connecting sight-line with those to the third point, the distance and position of the third point can be established by trigonometry. Then one of the newly determined sides of this triangle becomes the base of a second triangle embracing a new reference whose position is determined in the same way. Another triangle is thus completed and one of its sides
The story begins in 1802 with the beginning of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. The survey was government department within British India's bureaucratic Leviathan. This was an exploration led by a British man named William Lambton, in an effort to map the continent of India. No scientific undertaking on such a massive scale had previously been attempted. In order to get exact measurements, Lambton used a method known as Triangulation. This means triangle-ing', or conceiving three mutually visible reference points, usually on prominent hills or landforms, as the corners of a triangle. Knowing the exact distance between two of these points, and then measuring at each point the angles made by their connecting sight-line with those to the third point, the distance and position of the third point can be established by trigonometry. Then one of the newly determined sides of this triangle becomes the base of a second triangle embracing a new reference whose position is determined in the same way. Another triangle is thus completed and one of its sides