Science in the Field

This map shows the extraordinary scale of the ‘Great Trigonometrical Survey of India’, by far the largest and most complex land survey ever conducted in the British Empire.

The circles, crosses, and stars show the pendulum and astronomical stations that made up the Survey’s reference points. Each triangle is the calculated result of numerous angle and baseline measurements taken by teams of surveyors between 1802 and 1870.

The ‘survey sciences’ served in the front lines of the East India Company’s territorial conquest of India. Backed by British military power, surveyors worked for nearly a century to extend cartographic control—and with it administrative authority—across South Asia. As Clements Markham, Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, haughtily declared in 1871:

“The story of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, when fitly told, will form one of the proudest pages in the history of English domination in the east.”(1)

Surveys and expeditions relied upon large quantities of instrumentation surviving transportation and use in often harsh environments.

George Everest, the sixth Surveyor General of India, wrote that instruments needed to be secured against “a puff of wind or a careless native,” and designed the rugged, compact theodolite shown in Image 2 with Indian survey work in mind.

Despite efforts to guard instruments against field conditions, surveyors’ own accounts are filled with complaints like that of Edward Garstin:

“I have one of the best levelling instruments in India … but owing to the negligence of my servants the stand is lost. … Although I have the theodolite which the liberality of Government formerly gave me to replace the instrument I brought from Europe and lost on service, yet it is so very bad an instrument that it is useless, as no possible adjustment can make it correct enough to ... place the smallest dependence on it.”(3)

Garstin and his fellow surveyors frequently described their equipment as fragile, erratic, and easily lost, or blamed local collaborators and servants for mishandling objects and hampering work. And they often highlighted their own particular skills at coaxing wayward instruments back into working order.

Such reports drew attention to surveyors’ triumph over adversity, and furnished excuses when data was deficient or incomplete.