Abstract
THE Revue générale des Sciences for December 15 and 30, 1902, publishes an account of the measuremrnt of a meridian-arc in Spitsbergen from the pen of M. A. Hansky. Other accounts of the same enterprise have appeared in various journals, and some of them are before me.1 The history of the undertaking is as follows:—In the year 1823 Sir Edward Sabine was sent to Spitsbergen and Greenland to make “experiments to determine the figure of the earth by means of the pendulum vibrating seconds in different latitudes.” Sabine's experiences in Spitsbergen led him to conclude that that country, and that alone in the Arctic regions, owing to its exceptionally mild climate for so high a latitude, was suited for the actual measurement of a meridian-arc of any valuable length. Accordingly he wrote a memorandum advocating the undertaking, which will be found in the Quarterly Journal of Science and the Arts for 1826 (pp. 101-8). Nothing was done in the matter, but the proposition was not lost sight of. When the Swedes, in and after 1858, made their remarkable series of scientific expeditions to Spitsbergen, they set before themselves as one of their objects a preliminary survey and the choice of stations for an arc-measurement, and as long as Sabine lived they kept him informed of their interest in his proposal.1 The detailed proposal, with a map of the net, was published by Dunér and Nordenskiöld in a paper presented to the Swedish Academy on September 27, 1866.2
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CONWAY, M. Measurement of An Arc of Meridian in Spitsbergen . Nature 67, 536–538 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/067536a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/067536a0