Any general knowledge buff will tell you that Mount Everest, straddling the border between China and Nepal, stands at precisely 8,848m, or 29,029ft, above sea level.
Except that this is not necessarily so.
The Nepalese and Chinese governments have agreed to disagree on its height after negotiations in Kathmandu this week over a question that has fascinated and frustrated cartographers for more than 150 years.
Nepal will continue to say that the world’s highest peak is 8,848m, based on an Indian survey in 1955 that measured it from the top of its cap.
China, meanwhile, will use a new figure of 8,844.43m, calculated in 2005 by its State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, which measured the height of the rock beneath the layers of snow and ice.
The two countries agreed to recognise each other’s figures and to acknowledge that they measured different things. Nepal, however, is still refusing to accept a figure of 8,850m that was calculated by an American expedition in 1999 using satellite positioning for the first time, and is now used by the US National Geographic Society.
Nor does the controversy end there. Many scientists believe that the mountain is becoming up to 4mm higher every year as the Indian sub-continent pushes into the rest of the Asian continent. Rising sea levels attributed to global warming are also confusing traditional methods of estimating sea level — the base from which the height of Everest and all other points on land are measured.
The debate over Everest’s height has been going on since the peak was identified in the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India that began in 1802 and lasted most of the 19th century.
Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor-General of India, was the first to note in 1847 that there appeared to be a peak even taller than Mount Kanchenjunga, in Sikkim — until then considered the world’s highest. He was unable to take an accurate theodolite reading, however, because Nepal would not allow British surveyors to enter.
In 1852 a young Indian mathematician called Radhanath Sickdhar became the first person to calculate the height of the mountain — then named Peak XV — at 8,840m. In 1856, after averaging out several readings,Waugh publicly declared that the mountain was “most probably the highest in the world”.
At the same time he sparked another controversy by proposing to name the mountain after his predecessor as Surveyor-General, Sir George Everest.
Everest opposed the idea because he said that local people could not pronounce his name but the Royal Geographic Society approved it in 1865 on the ground that there were too many different local names.
Monday 19 April 2010
Sunday 4 April 2010
graduated magna cum laude from Wentworth Institute of Technology
Andrew Meade, graduated magna cum laude from Wentworth Institute of Technology in May 2009. He received a bachelor of science degree in construction management.
A 2004 graduate of Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School, he son of Donna Meade of New Bedford.
Meade successfully completed a rigorous course load including construction project management, control and scheduling, advanced estimating and bid analysis, construction safety and risk management, construction business and finance, law and government regulations, materials and methods of construction I and II, electrical and mechanical building systems, surveying I, structural design I, II, and III, materials testing and quality control, and labor relations.
His training included work with the LEED/BIM seminar, Habitat for Humanity, ASC/AGC Northeast regional student competition, CMAA National conferences, AGC mentor program, ASCE workshop for student chapter leaders, the electronic total station, electronic theodolite, automatic level, and CNC/manual machining. He is also trained in software including Primavera, On-Screen Takeoff, Prolog Manager, Timberline, AutoCAD, iBidPro, Revit, BID2WIN, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Outlook, SolidWorks, Mastercam, and PC/Mac operating systems.
Meade has been certified in 10/30-hour OSHA, CPR/FA/AED, and has received his Class 1C/2A hoisting engineer license.
While at Wentworth, Meade was the president of the Sigma Lambda Chi International Construction Honor Society and vice president of the Wentworth Construction Management Club. He was also a member of the Associated General Contractors of America, the Omicron IV Chapter of Sigma Lambda Chi International Honor Society, the Massachusetts Alpha Chapter of Tau Alpha Pi National Honor Society, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Construction Management Association of America.
He has also been awarded the CMAA Education and Research Foundation National Scholarship, the Edward T. Kirkpatrick Cooperative Education Award, the Massachusetts Construction Advancement Program Scholarship, the AGC Education and Research Foundation Undergraduate Scholarship and, most recently, the Wentworth Alumni Association Graduate Recognition.
Meade is currently employed by Hensel Phelps Construction Company in Fayettville, NC. Previously, he worked as an assistant project engineer for Gilbane Building Company and as an assistant superintendent for P.J. Keating Company.
A 2004 graduate of Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School, he son of Donna Meade of New Bedford.
Meade successfully completed a rigorous course load including construction project management, control and scheduling, advanced estimating and bid analysis, construction safety and risk management, construction business and finance, law and government regulations, materials and methods of construction I and II, electrical and mechanical building systems, surveying I, structural design I, II, and III, materials testing and quality control, and labor relations.
His training included work with the LEED/BIM seminar, Habitat for Humanity, ASC/AGC Northeast regional student competition, CMAA National conferences, AGC mentor program, ASCE workshop for student chapter leaders, the electronic total station, electronic theodolite, automatic level, and CNC/manual machining. He is also trained in software including Primavera, On-Screen Takeoff, Prolog Manager, Timberline, AutoCAD, iBidPro, Revit, BID2WIN, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Outlook, SolidWorks, Mastercam, and PC/Mac operating systems.
Meade has been certified in 10/30-hour OSHA, CPR/FA/AED, and has received his Class 1C/2A hoisting engineer license.
While at Wentworth, Meade was the president of the Sigma Lambda Chi International Construction Honor Society and vice president of the Wentworth Construction Management Club. He was also a member of the Associated General Contractors of America, the Omicron IV Chapter of Sigma Lambda Chi International Honor Society, the Massachusetts Alpha Chapter of Tau Alpha Pi National Honor Society, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Construction Management Association of America.
He has also been awarded the CMAA Education and Research Foundation National Scholarship, the Edward T. Kirkpatrick Cooperative Education Award, the Massachusetts Construction Advancement Program Scholarship, the AGC Education and Research Foundation Undergraduate Scholarship and, most recently, the Wentworth Alumni Association Graduate Recognition.
Meade is currently employed by Hensel Phelps Construction Company in Fayettville, NC. Previously, he worked as an assistant project engineer for Gilbane Building Company and as an assistant superintendent for P.J. Keating Company.
Saturday 3 April 2010
Now its maps are available on the web, Jonathan Brown plots a path through the history of the Ordnance Survey
British wildernesses may be few and far between nowadays, but the urge to experience nature in the raw remains a primal impulse among the nation's hikers, bikers and fitness enthusiasts. And for anyone looking to venture into the great outdoors this weekend, an Ordnance Survey (OS) map remains the prerequisite piece of kit to be packed alongside an apple, a cagoul and a box of corned beef and pickle sandwiches to ensure a safe return from a day yomping across hill and dale.
Yesterday campaigners calling for greater availability of official data were joined by lovers of the British countryside in hailing a partial victory against the venerable state-mapping company, after it agreed to offer free and unrestricted access to most of its maps online.
The landmark decision by the OS followed a long public consultation designed to open up information sources gathered at the taxpayer's expense and to make them available to a new generation of users without charge. Among those welcoming the initiative was the creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who has been advising Gordon Brown on ways to liberate the Government's vast data banks to a new wave of entrepreneurs who, it is hoped, may be able to use them to create cutting-edge industries.
Ministers were forced to waive the long-guarded copyright in response to the huge amount of mapping information already available on the internet free of charge. Services such as Google Earth, Street View and Multimap have revolutionised the way that the public perceives and pays for cartographical information.
OS OpenData, which went online yesterday, will exist alongside an earlier data-sharing scheme called OS OpenSpace, which is also free to groups looking to create and reproduce their own maps. It has brought an end to the absurdity of schoolchildren having to write for permission to photocopy a map from their public library.
The popularity of the service was immediately evident as the OS website became locked up with users rushing to download maps of their area for the first time.
But not everyone was entirely happy. The Ramblers, a charity which represents Britain's army of hikers and walkers, criticised the omission of the most popular scale paper maps after it was confirmed that the free datasets would not include digital versions of 1:25,000 Explorer and 1:50,000 Landranger series.
The charity's chief executive, Tom Franklin, accused the Government of "losing its nerve". He said: "We know one of the reasons people don't walk more is that they don't know good places to walk, and access to mapping is essential in overcoming that barrier. And more people walking more often is something the Government agrees is a good thing, helping tackle obesity and even climate change."
The OS said the decision to leave out the best-selling paper maps, which retail for anything up to £15 each, was "in the national interest" and could "undermine the continued provision of a nationwide paper map series".
Today, the geographically curious among us love nothing more than poring over the exquisitely drawn contour lines and triangulation marks of an OS map. Yet while modern-day OS maps may be viewed as documents of peace, beneficial to health and the environment, their origins are soaked in the blood of Jacobite suppression.
According to Dr Richard Oliver's A Short History of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, the first modern maps took shape between 1747 and 1755. Their instigator was an ambitious military officer named Colonel David Watson, who served with the Army and also the Engineers of the Board of Ordnance. The painstaking work was carried out by the Lanarkshire-born surveyor William Roy, who went on to become the father of modern cartography, and the pioneering water colourist Paul Sandby, who helped turn the first maps into beautifully realised artworks. It was a primitive process by modern satellite-driven standards. The contour line was yet to be invented, and all distances were measured by 66ft lengths of chain.
The Jacobite uprising of 1745 had caused consternation to King George II, who urgently commissioned the Highlands survey as a means of pacifying the insurgent clansmen north of the border. Overseeing the project was the formidable figure of the Duke of Cumberland, later to achieve notoriety as the "Butcher" of Culloden, architect of the murderously one-sided battle where 2,000 Jacobites were killed or wounded at the cost of just 50 government lives.
Perhaps inevitably, however, it was to be events across the Channel that were to drive the next stage in development. A dispute between the Royal Societies of London and Paris saw the great and the good of the learned bodies try to resolve a long-running disagreement over the relative positions of their astronomical observatories. The system of triangulation settled the debate – a process whereby distances across water and other obstacles were measured for the first time using the angles of a fixed point.
Yet throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, conflict continued to fuel the need for ever more accurate and detailed maps. In England, the first charting of the rolling farmland of Kent and the marshes of Essex appeared amid mounting concern over the prospect of invasion by Napoleon's forces.
By the time that the Battle of Waterloo was won, everywhere south of Birmingham was mapped. The work was physically demanding and progress was slow. It was not until 1823 that the survey had inched its way northwards armed with the advanced Ramsden theodolite for measuring vertical angles. Thomas Colby, the longest serving Director General of the Ordnance Survey, walked 586 miles in 22 days during one reconnaissance journey.
In 1841, at the time of the railway boom, officials were granted the right by Parliament to enter property in order to measure it. But disputes over which scale to adopt and the distractions of mapping Ireland failed to stem the advance of the theodolite-wielding geodesists, who continued to press ahead with their task and who have been carefully measuring, mapping and remapping the whole of the UK on a near-constant basis ever since.
Dr Christopher Board, chairman of the Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps, said the process of mapping the UK would never be complete and needed to remain largely state-funded. "If you left it to private industry you would find the most popular tourist areas would be mapped regularly and kept up to date, but there would be huge areas of agricultural land, moor or croft that would be left untouched," he said.
Yesterday campaigners calling for greater availability of official data were joined by lovers of the British countryside in hailing a partial victory against the venerable state-mapping company, after it agreed to offer free and unrestricted access to most of its maps online.
The landmark decision by the OS followed a long public consultation designed to open up information sources gathered at the taxpayer's expense and to make them available to a new generation of users without charge. Among those welcoming the initiative was the creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who has been advising Gordon Brown on ways to liberate the Government's vast data banks to a new wave of entrepreneurs who, it is hoped, may be able to use them to create cutting-edge industries.
Ministers were forced to waive the long-guarded copyright in response to the huge amount of mapping information already available on the internet free of charge. Services such as Google Earth, Street View and Multimap have revolutionised the way that the public perceives and pays for cartographical information.
OS OpenData, which went online yesterday, will exist alongside an earlier data-sharing scheme called OS OpenSpace, which is also free to groups looking to create and reproduce their own maps. It has brought an end to the absurdity of schoolchildren having to write for permission to photocopy a map from their public library.
The popularity of the service was immediately evident as the OS website became locked up with users rushing to download maps of their area for the first time.
But not everyone was entirely happy. The Ramblers, a charity which represents Britain's army of hikers and walkers, criticised the omission of the most popular scale paper maps after it was confirmed that the free datasets would not include digital versions of 1:25,000 Explorer and 1:50,000 Landranger series.
The charity's chief executive, Tom Franklin, accused the Government of "losing its nerve". He said: "We know one of the reasons people don't walk more is that they don't know good places to walk, and access to mapping is essential in overcoming that barrier. And more people walking more often is something the Government agrees is a good thing, helping tackle obesity and even climate change."
The OS said the decision to leave out the best-selling paper maps, which retail for anything up to £15 each, was "in the national interest" and could "undermine the continued provision of a nationwide paper map series".
Today, the geographically curious among us love nothing more than poring over the exquisitely drawn contour lines and triangulation marks of an OS map. Yet while modern-day OS maps may be viewed as documents of peace, beneficial to health and the environment, their origins are soaked in the blood of Jacobite suppression.
According to Dr Richard Oliver's A Short History of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, the first modern maps took shape between 1747 and 1755. Their instigator was an ambitious military officer named Colonel David Watson, who served with the Army and also the Engineers of the Board of Ordnance. The painstaking work was carried out by the Lanarkshire-born surveyor William Roy, who went on to become the father of modern cartography, and the pioneering water colourist Paul Sandby, who helped turn the first maps into beautifully realised artworks. It was a primitive process by modern satellite-driven standards. The contour line was yet to be invented, and all distances were measured by 66ft lengths of chain.
The Jacobite uprising of 1745 had caused consternation to King George II, who urgently commissioned the Highlands survey as a means of pacifying the insurgent clansmen north of the border. Overseeing the project was the formidable figure of the Duke of Cumberland, later to achieve notoriety as the "Butcher" of Culloden, architect of the murderously one-sided battle where 2,000 Jacobites were killed or wounded at the cost of just 50 government lives.
Perhaps inevitably, however, it was to be events across the Channel that were to drive the next stage in development. A dispute between the Royal Societies of London and Paris saw the great and the good of the learned bodies try to resolve a long-running disagreement over the relative positions of their astronomical observatories. The system of triangulation settled the debate – a process whereby distances across water and other obstacles were measured for the first time using the angles of a fixed point.
Yet throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, conflict continued to fuel the need for ever more accurate and detailed maps. In England, the first charting of the rolling farmland of Kent and the marshes of Essex appeared amid mounting concern over the prospect of invasion by Napoleon's forces.
By the time that the Battle of Waterloo was won, everywhere south of Birmingham was mapped. The work was physically demanding and progress was slow. It was not until 1823 that the survey had inched its way northwards armed with the advanced Ramsden theodolite for measuring vertical angles. Thomas Colby, the longest serving Director General of the Ordnance Survey, walked 586 miles in 22 days during one reconnaissance journey.
In 1841, at the time of the railway boom, officials were granted the right by Parliament to enter property in order to measure it. But disputes over which scale to adopt and the distractions of mapping Ireland failed to stem the advance of the theodolite-wielding geodesists, who continued to press ahead with their task and who have been carefully measuring, mapping and remapping the whole of the UK on a near-constant basis ever since.
Dr Christopher Board, chairman of the Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps, said the process of mapping the UK would never be complete and needed to remain largely state-funded. "If you left it to private industry you would find the most popular tourist areas would be mapped regularly and kept up to date, but there would be huge areas of agricultural land, moor or croft that would be left untouched," he said.
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