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Title: The Great Arc : The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named by John Keay ISBN: 0-06-093295-3 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: August, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Arc you kidding me?...
Comment: ...a whole book about some dusty old surveyors, trigonometric measurements, arcs of meridian and strange measuring devices called theodolites. Yes, and brilliantly done too and immensely readable. It's hard to believe that a book about such arcane subjects as those mentioned above could be made interesting - but Keay has done it.
There is no need no know trigonometry, cartography or any '-phy' for that matter. The book is short and so spends very little time on the technicalities of the subject, instead focusing more on where the interesting parts are always to be found - in the people and the places of these historical adventures. But what got the people - firstly Colonel William Lambton and then Sir George Everest (1790-1866), following Lambton's death in 1823, to the place - India, in the first place. An adventure in mapping. At the start of the 19th century cartography was still very basic. There were no standards of measurement or common method for portraying relief features such as mountains. Many parts of the world had not been surveyed and a complete grid of latitude and longitude lines covering the Earth was still decades away. The arc of the story was simply a part (a large part) of one such a line of longitude.
Lambton was like many surveyor's of the day in that it was typically the army that undertook these mapping projects, but what was not typical, was the man himself and the size of the project. Mapping India was a mammoth project and underlying it was Lambton's ultimate goal of obtaining an accurate measurement of the Earth. Thousands would be involved, it would take decades and outlast Lambton himself. The task would be finished in 1843 by Sir George Everest who would, along the way, have his name recorded for posterity on a certain Himalayan Mountain.
Although Lambton can not match Sir George Everest with a mountain as his public recognition, he might very well be satisfied with knowing that credit for starting The Great Trigonometric Survey, is all his and that even long after his death, his pioneering work was responsible for India being considered the best surveyed country in the world. Being the sort of man Keay depicts Lambton as, that would probably be praise enough for him.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting Science Biography
Comment: Similar scientific biographies such as this book have become quite common. Longitude and Riddle of the Compass are two that come to mind. I personally enjoy such books as they usually take something that most modern people take for granted and explain the work and effort that went into various types of discoveries.
The Great Arc is an interesting story of a very difficult subject. A survey of the Indian sub-continent was not only difficult due to the distances and the lack of computers to crunch the unbelievable amount of data, but also the weather and the various illnesses that seem to decimate these kinds of endeavors. William Lambton, who most people have probably never heard of, takes it upon himself as an officer in the British Army, to begin a survey of the Indian sub-continent done on an amazingly precise and accurate scale. The years that he spends battling the elements and the lack of help are well told. His successor, George Everest is an extremely difficult man to work for but he does yields some vast improvements to the surveying process.
Very little time is spent on Mount Everest, other than to explain the origin of the name and some of the debate about calculating the height of the mountain range. Overall, however, this book was an excellent story on the quest to survey with almost fanatical precision a large piece of the earth and the men, many of whom died in the process, whod dedicated their lives and careers to thsi endeavor.
Rating: 4
Summary: Inspiring tale (told from European eyes)
Comment: A thin but inspiring history: how William Lambton, George Everest (pronounced EVE-rest), and other hardy and dedicated souls mapped a great deal of India. The Arc was a series of triangles plotted through vertical and horizontal triangulation, sometimes confirmed by fixing one's place by observation of the stars. This mapping required braving malaria- and dysentery-infested forests and plains; crunching the numbers in impossibly complex equations; lugging a vast instrument called The Great Theodolite over rugged terrain; contructing towers and scaffolding for flagmen and flares, and huge amounts of patience. The story is awe-inspiring, if only for the bravery of these pioneers, who often faced greater casualty rates than soldiers in the name of science; but I was most impressed by the precision of the survey under the given conditions. Every variable was predicted and dealt with, even to attaching thermometers to the measuring-chains so as to calculate the metal's expansion and compensate in the resulting calculation. In all this plotting, the measuring of mountains was incidental, but Keay also reveals how the bad-tempered Everest somehow got his name attached to the world's highest peak. This book is a fine work of scholarship and very pleasant to read. However, it is a pity that there is so little on the reactions of Indians to the survey: I'd like to know how Everest's own native contingent felt, what local villagers thought on seeing the great procession, what the survey's own Indian mathmatical genius felt about the project. Perhaps there is no record of their feelings, but that's a shame. Otherwise, this is a stirring tale of human acheivement.
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Title: The Map That Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0060931809 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel ISBN: 0140258795 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: India: A History by John Keay ISBN: 0802137970 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 10 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Drawing the Line : How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America by Edwin Danson ISBN: 0471385026 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 08 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East by John Keay ISBN: 0393058492 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
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