Everest reaches new heights
QUESTION When was Mount Everest first measured with any degree of accuracy? How is it measured so precisely today?
THE Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was a geographical survey of the Indian subcontinent which began in 1802. Much of the work was performed by George Everest, who was the surveyor general of India until 1843.
He was succeeded by Andrew Waugh and it was Waugh, who was in post from 1843 to 1861, who surveyed the Himalayas, providing measurements for the Himalayan giants: Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga. At the time of the survey, Kangchenjunga was believed to be the highest mountain in the world.
To measure Peak XV, as it was then known, Waugh’s surveyors used triangulation. Observers examined the peak from multiple points at known distances, and were then able to measure the angle from Everest’s peak to their observation points.
It took years to calculate the results, and when they determined it was exactly 29,000ft (8,839.2m), Waugh publicly declared, in 1856, Everest was 29,002ft to avoid the impression that it was an approximation. As one wag later put it, Waugh was the first person ‘to put two feet on top of Mount Everest’.
The mountain was measured several times over the next century with around 27ft added to the height. In the most recent calculations, Chinese and Nepalese scientists used Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) to produce about 300 control points that were used to gather trigonometric data.
On May 22, 2019, an expedition team carried a GNSS receiver and antenna to the top of Everest to get satellite data. Everest’s height is now officially 29,031.69ft or 8,848.86m; however, there is disagreement over the exact elevation of any great mountain because of variations in snow level, among other factors.
J. S. Lewis, Oxford.
QUESTION Did Isaac Newton borrow his famous phrase ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’?
ISAAC Newton remarked in a letter to his rival Robert Hooke, dated February 5, 1675: ‘What Des-Cartes [sic] did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’
At this time Hooke and Newton were on good terms – they were later to become enemies – and it appears that Newton was complimenting Hooke.
Newton was alluding to a simile said much earlier by Bernard of Chartres, a 12th-century philosopher. His contemporary, John of Salisbury, wrote in his Metalogicon of 1159 that Bernard would say that ‘we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter’.
L. Weston, Solihull, West Midlands.
QUESTION Was the Sabbath observed during fighting in the US Civil War?
TO the early settler, strict observance of the Lord’s Day was a sacred and necessary part of religious life. By the 19th century, the success of America led to increased commerce and leisure time that put pressure on the observance of the Sabbath. Organisations such as the Philadelphia Sabbath Association and the influential New York Sabbath Committee arose to combat this.
The Civil War (1861-65) between the States further eroded the social fabric of the nation. The demand for Sunday labour was increased by the urgencies of war, Sunday transportation of troops and supplies became part of the war effort and the desire for news from the front led to an expansion of Sunday’s mail service.
The New York Sabbath Committee induced President Lincoln to issue the General Order Respecting the Observance of the Sabbath in 1862 in which: ‘The President, Commander-inChief of the Army and Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in military and naval service. The importance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people... demand that Sunday labour in the Army and Navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity.’
Under the stress of war, however, these commands proved impossible to observe.
In the South, the necessities of war pained General Lee. He wrote to his daughter in December 1861: ‘One of the miseries of war is that there is no Sabbath, and the current work and strife has no cessation.’
T. McPherson, Daventry, Northamptonshire. O
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