Phillip Parker King has been described as the greatest of Australia's early marine surveyors. But while the achievements of Cook and Flinders are widely known, this is the first telling of King's story. Unlike Cook and Flinders, King was Australian-borna "the son of Philip Gidley King, governor of New South Wales. In a series of gruelling voyages between 1817 and 1822, King charted most of the north-west coast of Australia from the eastern tip of Arnhem Land all the way round to Cape Leeuwin and King George Sound. He surveyed Macquarie Harbour in Van Diemen's Land and the treacherous waters inside the Great Barrier Reef, filling gaps in the work of his famous predecessors. Marsden Hordern, a splendid storyteller, creates for the reader a sense of following, engrossed, in King's wake. The hazards of reefs, shoals and tides are ever-present, as is delight in unfamiliar wildlife and curiosity about the Aboriginal people. The question left hanging is whether King might be better known today had he been a less capable, good and faithful servant of the Crown, and more inclined to the excess and ineptitude of certain other early explorers. Winner of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for General History. Companion volume to Mariners are Warned!, another prize-winning maritime biography by the same author.

In demonstrating how Newtonian gravitational theory and Euclidean geometry can be used and developed in Earth's environment, the text discusses earth's gravitational field; matrices and orbital geometry; satellite orbit dynamics; geometry of satellite observations; statistical implications; and data analysis. Prerequisites: introductory course in college physics and a first-year course in calculus.

John Lort Stokes was commissioned by the British Hydrographic Office in 1837 to survey and chart unknown parts of the Australian coastline. He was the last Royal Navy surveyor to hold such a roving commission-as had Matthew Flinders and Phillip Parker King before him. The voyage lasted six years and his ship was H.M.S. Beagle, of Charles Darwin fame. Stokes circumnavigated Australia twice. In the north he discovered the Fitzroy, Albert and Flinders rivers and Port Darwin, and in the south charted that graveyard of sailing ships, Bass Strait. A century later, twelve of his charts were still in use. The occasional breathtaking foolhardiness of this earnest and conscientious man startles the reader, as it must have done his men. On a whim, Stokes twice risked drowning himself and others with him, and he made several daredevil escapes from crocodiles. The stories are gripping, and Marsden Hordern is a gifted and vigorous storyteller. He is ably assisted by the ship's mate, Helpman-a chatty, witty chronicler. Mariners are Warned! is an engrossing biography, written with empathy by a fellow mariner. Winner of the Age Book of the Year; Victorian Premier's Literary Award (A. A. Phillips Award for Australian Studies); Braille Book of the Year; Australian Maritime History Prize. Companion volume to King of the Australian Coast, another prize-winning maritime biography by the same author.

From the first vistas provided by flight in balloons in the eighteenth century to the most recent sensing operations performed by military drones, the history of aerial imagery has marked the transformation of how people perceived their world, better understood their past, and imagined their future. In Aerial Aftermaths Caren Kaplan traces this cultural history, showing how aerial views operate as a form of world-making tied to the times and places of war. Kaplan's investigation of the aerial arts of war-painting, photography, and digital imaging-range from England's surveys of Scotland following the defeat of the 1746 Jacobite rebellion and early twentieth-century photographic mapping of Iraq to images taken in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Throughout, Kaplan foregrounds aerial imagery's importance to modern visual culture and its ability to enforce colonial power, demonstrating both the destructive force and the potential for political connection that come with viewing from above.

The fourth edition of this textbook has been thoroughly revised in order to reflect the central role which geodesy has achieved in the past ten years. The Global Geodetic Observing System established by the IAG utilizes a variety of techniques to determine the geometric shape of the earth and its kinematics, the variations of earth rotation, and the earth's gravity field. Space techniques play a fundamental role, with recent space missions also including gravity field recovery. Terrestrial techniques are important for regional and local applications, and for validating the results of the space missions. Global and regional reference systems are now well established and widely used. They also serve as a basis for geo-information systems. The analysis of the time variation of the geodetic products provides the link to other geosciences and contributes to proper modelling of geodynamic processes. The book follows the principal directions of geodesy, providing the theoretical background as well as the principles of measurement and evaluation methods. Selected examples of instruments illustrate the geodetic work. An extensive reference list supports further studies. The book is intended to serve as an introductory textbook for graduate students as well as a reference for scientists and engineers in the fields of geodesy, geophysics, surveying engineering and geomatics.

Mount Everest is known to everyone - but what of the person after whom it was named? This book traces the life and profession of that person, George Everest. In particular, it covers his life dedicated to surveying in India during the first half of the 19th century.;George Everest went to India at the tender age of 16 but within a few years was leading survey parties into the remotest areas of the subcontinent. His particluar passion was geodesy - the determination of the size and shape of the earth - and he soon ecame Superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. In addition, he spent many years as Surveyor General of India.;This book draws heavily on original correspondence archived in India, offering a good flavour of his character both as a person and as a manager. Everest was a surveyor, linguist, engineer, astronomer and religious philosopher, but in the pursuit of his goals he did not suffer fools gladly. It was recorded that he was so indefatigable that his contemporaries were accustomed to speak of him as "Neverrest".;The book provides insight inot the life of a remarkable man and shows why the earth's highest peak now bears his name.

From the first vistas provided by flight in balloons in the eighteenth century to the most recent sensing operations performed by military drones, the history of aerial imagery has marked the transformation of how people perceived their world, better understood their past, and imagined their future. In Aerial Aftermaths Caren Kaplan traces this cultural history, showing how aerial views operate as a form of world-making tied to the times and places of war. Kaplan's investigation of the aerial arts of war-painting, photography, and digital imaging-range from England's surveys of Scotland following the defeat of the 1746 Jacobite rebellion and early twentieth-century photographic mapping of Iraq to images taken in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Throughout, Kaplan foregrounds aerial imagery's importance to modern visual culture and its ability to enforce colonial power, demonstrating both the destructive force and the potential for political connection that come with viewing from above.

In the 18th century, Europe's scientific community was torn between two opposing theories: Descartes' argument that the Earth was spherical, and Newton's contention that it was flattened at the poles. Recognizing that the answer was the key to securely navigating the earth's oceans, France and Spain organized a joint expedition to colonial Peru. Their goal was to measure a degree of latitude at the Equator by comparing this measurement to one taken back in Europe, they would be able to determine the planet's shape and put an end to the debate. But what seemed a straightforward scientific exercise was almost immediately marred by a series of unforeseen catastrophes: treacherous terrain, deeply suspicious locals, and the voyagers' own hubris. A thrilling tale of adventure, political history, and scientific discovery, Larrie D. Ferreiro's Measure of the Earth recounts the greatest scientific exhibition of the Enlightenment through the eyes of the men who completed it,pioneers who overcame tremendous adversity to traverse the towering Andes Mountains and discern the Earth's true shape.

La Caille was one of the observational astronomers and geodesists who followed Newton in developing ideas about celestial mechanics and the shape of the earth. He provided data to the great 18th-century mathematicians involved in understanding the complex gravitational effects that the heavenly bodies have on one another. Observing from the Cape of Good Hope, he made the first ever telescopic sky survey and gave many of the southern constellations their present-day names. He measured the paths of the planets and determined their distances by trigonometry. In addition, he made a controversial measurement of the radius of the earth that seemed to prove it was pear-shaped. On a practical level, La Caille developed the method of 'Lunars' for determining longitudes at sea. He mapped the Cape. As an influential teacher he propagated Newton's theory of universal gravitation at a time when it was only beginning to be accepted on the European continent. This book gives the most comprehensive overview so far available of La Caille's life and work, showing how he interacted with his often difficult colleagues. It places special emphasis on his life at, and his observations and comments on, the Cape of Good Hope, where he spent the years 1751-53.

Geodesy has undergone technological and theoretical changes of immense proportions since the launching of Sputnik. The accuracy of current satellite geodetic data has approached the centimeter level and will improve by one or two orders of magnitude over the next decade. This bodes well for the application of geodetic data to the solution of problems in solid earth, oceanic and atmospheric sciences. The report Geodesy in the Year 2000 addresses many areas of investigation that will benefit from this improvement in accuracy.

Practical Surveying and Computations is long established as a major land surveying textbook.

The book has been completely rewritten revised to take account of the profound changes in surveying methods and applications due to electronic instrumentation and computerized data processing systems. These new developments give today's surveyor unprecedented freedom in the numerical handling of data. As a result, the emphasis is shifted from the need for detailed understanding of instrument function to the avoidance of blunders at the data-gathering stage and the ability to appraise computer output in the light of fundamental principles: that is, a quality control system. The explanations and examples in this new edition help equip readers to select those procedures and techniques that are most reliable, accurate, cost effective and appropriate to the problem tackled.