- Is there a query to which you wish to know the reply? Or are you aware the reply to a query right here?
- Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY; or e mail charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk
QUESTION When was Mount Everest first measured with any diploma of accuracy? How is it measured so exactly right now?
The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was a geographical survey of the Indian subcontinent which started in 1802.
Much of the work was carried out by Sir George Everest, who was the Surveyor General of India till 1843.
He was succeeded by Sir Andrew Waugh and it was Waugh, who was in put up from 1843 to 1861, who surveyed the Himalayas, offering measurements for the Himalayan giants: Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga.
At the time of the survey, Kangchenjunga was believed to be the best mountain on the earth.
Much of the work was carried out by Sir George Everest, who was the Surveyor General of India till 1843. Pictured: A view of Mount Everest
To measure Peak XV, as Everest was then identified, Waugh’s surveyors used triangulation.
Observers examined the height from a number of factors at identified distances; they had been then in a position to measure the angle from Everest’s peak to their commentary factors.
It took years to calculate the outcomes, and once they decided it was precisely 29,000ft (8,839.2m) Waugh publicly declared, in 1856, that Everest was 29,002ft, to keep away from the impression that it was an approximation.
As one wag later put it, Waugh was the primary individual ‘to place two ft on high of Mount Everest’.
The mountain was measured a number of instances over the following century, with round 27ft added to the peak.
To measure Peak XV, as Everest was then identified, Waugh’s surveyors used triangulation. Pictured: Trekkers on their solution to Everest base camp
In the newest calculations, Chinese and Nepalese scientists used Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) to provide about 300 management factors that had been used to assemble trigonometric information.
On May 22, 2019, an expedition workforce carried a GNSS receiver and antenna to the highest of Everest to get satellite tv for pc information.
Everest’s peak is now formally 29,031.69ft or 8,848.86m.
However, there may be disagreement over the precise elevation of any nice mountain due to variations in snow degree, amongst different elements.
J. S. Lewis, Oxford.
QUESTION Did Isaac Newton borrow his well-known phrase ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’?
Issac Newton remarked in a letter to his rival Robert Hooke, dated February 5, 1675: ‘What Des-Cartes [sic] did was a very good step.
‘You have added a lot a number of methods, and particularly in taking the colors of skinny plates into philosophical consideration.
‘If I’ve seen additional it’s by standing on the shoulders of Giants.’
At this time, Hooke and Newton had been on good phrases — they had been later to turn into enemies — and it seems that Newton was complimenting Hooke.
Pictured: Sir Isaac Newton, an English Mathematician and Physicist
Newton was alluding to a simile used a lot earlier by Bernard of Chartres, a Twelfth-century thinker.
His modern, 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’re in a position to see extra and farther than the latter.’
L. Weston, Solihull, W. Mids.
QUESTION Was the Sabbath noticed throughout preventing within the U.S. Civil War?
To the early settler, strict observance of the Lord’s Day was a sacred and obligatory a part of spiritual life.
By the nineteenth century, the success of America led to elevated commerce and leisure time that put stress on the observance of the Sabbath.
Organisations such because the Philadelphia Sabbath Association and the influential New York Sabbath Committee arose to fight this.
The Civil War (1861-65) between the States additional eroded the social cloth of the nation.
The demand for Sunday labour was elevated by the urgencies of struggle, Sunday transportation of troops and provides grew to become a part of the struggle effort, and the will for information from the entrance led to an enlargement of Sunday’s mail service.
The New York Sabbath Committee induced President Lincoln to situation the General Order Respecting the Observance of the Sabbath, in 1862, during which: ‘The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, wishes and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and males in navy and naval service.
The New York Sabbath Committee induced President Lincoln (pictured) to situation the General Order Respecting the Observance of the Sabbath, in 1862
‘The significance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly relaxation, the sacred rights of Christian troopers and sailors, a changing into deference to the very best sentiment of a Christian individuals… demand that Sunday labour within the Army and Navy be lowered to the measure of strict necessity.’
Under the stress of struggle, nevertheless, these instructions proved unimaginable to look at. In the South, the requirements of struggle pained General Lee.
He wrote to his daughter in December 1861: ‘One of the miseries of struggle is that there isn’t any Sabbath, and the present work and strife has no cessation.’
T. McPherson, Daventry, Northants.