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Description of topographic instruments for measuring lengths, angles and altitudes

Karampasis Christos

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Summary

Since the Paleolithic era, man has devised the representation of the geographical area. He depicted his immediate and wider surroundings in his attempt to "tame" the geographical space, and devised the maps. Characteristically, selecting three-dimensional geographic features and presenting them through two-dimensional symbols is an abstraction process well advanced for the primitive human mind, however, the first charts must have appeared before writing, as at least as a result of testimonies travelers who came into contact with primitive peoples who painted maps without having discovered the writing. According to these testimonies, when the tourists were asking for directions, the native's usual reaction was to carve the sketch with the wood on the ground and add twigs and stones to show positions. The creation of the map, therefore, is the result of man's inherent tendency to communicate with his fellow human beings. Evolutionally, the need and usefulness of the maps was first perceived by explorers, navy, and military and much later by politicians (Raisz, 1948: xi-xii). In this paper entitled "Description of topographic instruments for the measurement of lengths, angles and altitudes", the stages of topography science and its characteristics will be presented in a series of chapters. In particular, chapter 1 presents a historical overview of the science of topography from antiquity to the present day and will analyze the reference-projection systems with special reference to those that are used in Greece. In Chapter 2, we refer to units of measurement of topography, while in Chapter 3 we develop the theory of errors. The 4th chapter deals with the three fundamental problems of topography and finally, chapter 5 analyzes the topographic measuring instruments by means of examples. The following is the unity of the conclusions in which, in addition to the summary of what has been presented, will be mentioned more generally in the future of topography proposing some new ways of approach that are in line with the contemporary reality. At this point, it is worth mentioning that for the writing of the paper, material from University notes of the course of Topography and Geodesy, as well as undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral courses. The main reason for the use of student papers and university notes is related to the lack of various instruments by the Laboratory of Geodesy and Informatics of the Geosciences of the University of Chania. It was considered appropriate, in order to avoid omissions in the various institutions to use the already existing recorded material.

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