The spark that fired the great trigonometrical survey of India: The triangulation survey made between Fort St. George (13°08'N) and Mangalore (12°91'N) by William Lambton in the early 1800s

In 1800, the English East-India Company at Fort St. George (≈ Madras) ordered surveys of peninsular India for political reasons. William Lambton of the 33rd Regiment of Foot – who had just arrived in Madras to join the army marching against the Mysore Tiger Tipu Sultan in 1799 – started the scientifically accurate landscape measurement using trigonometric methods in 1801, one of the three major surveys that were concurrently launched and...