Image 1 shows a ‘Russian’-style transit instrument that has been carefully packed into two large boxes for transportation into the field.
This instrument was one of a pair ordered in 1869 for use in the Great Trigonometrical Survey.
In 1862 the Surveyor General of India, Andrew Scott Waugh, had declared the results from the entire eastern section of the survey to be sub-standard “on account of the defective state of instrumental equipments”, and ordered it re-done “with appropriate apparatus.”
This instrument was used to determine local time from the motion of the stars. This could then be compared with Greenwich time transmitted via telegraph, the time difference giving the site’s longitude.
This instrument therefore worked within a complex imperial network of telegraph lines and survey outposts.
Its size and weight also reminds us that these networks could not function without the labour that made such tools “portable.”
