The Great ARC: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named

by John Keay

Book Overview

The Great Indian Arc of the Meridian, begun in 1800, was the longest maesurement of the earth's surface ever to have been attempted. Its 1,600 miles of inch-perfect survey took nearly fifty years.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060195185
• ISBN13: 9780060195182
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

The Great Arc

This is a well written and fascinating account of the mapping of India and the measurement of the Height of Everest, or as it should be pronounced Eve rest. The account is certainly dramatic and the characters are just that. A book I found hard to put down.

John Keay Hits a Gold Mine of History

An exhilarating history of two forgotten men, first William Lambton and then his successor Sir George Everest, who by sheer will power overcame enormous contrary forces to lay out the first geodetic survey of India. With more suspense than a Harrison Ford movie, John Keay tells us how the large teams that each Surveyor General commanded, from technicians down to coolies, battled numerous huge obstacles to triangulate the land mass of India. What's more amazing is that these triangles, dozens of miles on a leg, were accurate to within inches. It's hard to imagine the dedication of Lambton in 1820, working at night by kerosene lamp, evaluating complex trigonometrical formulas long before calculators were available. One numerical error in the fourth decimal place would cost months of backtracking, but few were made. Lambton and Everest loved their project. One feels the slow pace of life in 19th century India. Things could stop for years, and then pick up again as if no time had passed. This enterprise was comparable in its time to the Apollo project of the 1960's in effort and scope, but it ran for roughly 60 years! The story culminates with the first precise measurements of the Himalaya Mountains in Nepal. It is fitting that the peak that eventually emerges as the highest of all was given Everest's name (Lambton had died long before). And once again to our amazement, the altitude was correct! Not many historians are comfortable with science and technology. So for every book about the relentless advance of those subjects, there are probably 50 rehashing the political intrigues of Europe. But Keay writes in a fascinating way about men who spent their lives immersed in these fields, and about Lambton's and Everest's faith that the future would belong to science, engineering, and technology as they moved forward on the bedrock of mathematics.

A tall tale

I've given this five stars, as I did not have a clue about the issues involved and the people concerned that this book concerns, before I picked it up.The best thing about it is it brings back two people and their associates, who had attained oblivion, to a sort of immortality.Lucidly written and easy to get through, the book comes from a specialist on India with some fine books to his credit including a major history of the sub-continent.I think this book makes a fine gift, and I've already started giving away copies.Rarely are the hidden chapters of history which would ordinarily be considered too dry to even bother with returned to consciousness. The adventure, effort and facts about Indian Geography including the Himalaya and the lives of expatriate Englishpeople, stiching up an Empire - it makes absorbing reading.

Arc you kidding me?...

...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.

The compass-wallahs gird India

This is a fun, short read. The British Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was an epic undertaking spanning decades which took the measure of the sub-continent.The book is a brief but lively biography of the two men who headed the survey - William Lambton and George Everest. The progress of their efforts across the Indian landscape makes for fascinating reading.The amazing accomplishments of the Survey in the face of fever, tigers, and other resistance are highlighted in the book. The naming of Mount Everest is but an historical afterthought to the incredible saga of the Survey itself.This entertaining and highly readable book does touch on some of the social, political, and scientific ramifications of Survey - but only briefly. The narrative is driven by the progress and setbacks of the Survey itself.