Abstract
NO. 3 of the new series of professional papers of the Ordnance Survey contains some excellent notes on the geodesy of the British Isles, by Colonel Close, R.E., which bring the position of geodetic achievement fairly up to date, and incidentally add some historical indications of the processes by means of which our position in the world of geodetic science has been secured. Their usefulness has been increased by the addition of a very ample bibliography of the science, and by simple diagrams illustrating certain special features affecting geodetic levelling, including the principal triangulation of Great Britain, the geographical position of the West European meridional arc, and of the European longitudinal arc. In the section of the pamphlet dealing with standard measurement it is interesting to observe that the national standard yard, which was legalised in 1855, consists of a marked length on a bronze bar bearing a definite relationship to the “international” metre (also a measured length on a bar), which was originally intended to represent one ten-millionth of the length of the earth's meridional quadrant.
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HOLDICH, T. Geodetic Science . Nature 95, 93 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095093a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095093a0