Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
Nain Singh Rawat and the GTS
Following the loss of their American colonies, the British set about obtain-
ing much richer and more populous ones by completing their conquest of
India—the country that eventually became the jewel in the crown of the
British Empire. In fact, the process was quite piecemeal and was not com-
pleted until well into the nineteenth century. The East India Company
wanted to survey its new territory to take stock of what it had acquired,
21
but in 1802 it was persuaded to take on a much bigger enterprise called the
Great Trigonometric Survey (GTS)—one of the biggest surveying projects
ever undertaken and one that would set a high standard for the future. The
GTS required a great deal of organization, skill, and money. It took until
1913 to complete and outlasted the East India Company, which was taken
over by the crown in 1857.
The GTS surveyed India by triangulation from south to north. The
original supervisor, Major William Lambton, may have had higher motives
than his employer in undertaking the task: he wanted to make a contribu-
tion to knowledge by taking accurate measurements of an arc of longitude
(which tells us about the size and shape of the earth) and of gravitational
anomalies. His successor, Colonel George Everest, continued the survey
northward after taking over in 1818. He introduced the most accurate
measuring instruments of the day into the survey and, with his predeces-
sor, measured a large 11.5\ meridian arc from the southernmost point of
the Indian subcontinent to the Himalayas. In 1843 Colonel Andrew Waugh
took over the survey, and it was on his watch that the world's highest
mountain was discovered; originally the surveyors labeled it Peak XV, but
later Waugh named it after his predecessor (who never saw it).
World politics entered the survey at this point. The region that was to be
surveyed in the mountainous north of India spilled beyond the border into
Tibet, then a closed and fiercely independent society that did not welcome
outsiders. Tibet was part of the Great Game between the two main empire-
building nations of the world in Asia at that time—Britain and Russia—
and the British authorities placed a high importance on staking some sort
of claim there by surveying this mysterious land, about which little was
21. The East India Company was a joint-stock company founded at the beginning of
the eighteenth century. Its business was trade between Britain and the Far East. It main-
tained its own army for many years and conquered much of India, which it ran virtually as a
private empire until India was formally incorporated into the British Empire by the govern-
ment in 1857.
