About 215 years ago, the British embarked on a mapping exercise called "the Great Trigonometric Survey of India (GTS) ". The GTS exercise is considered to be one of mankind's greatest scientific endeavors and resulted in the development of inch perfect maps of India, calculation of the height of Mt Everest & a better understanding of the shape of the Earth. GTS was an extraordinarily expensive project not only in monetary terms but also in terms of human lives lost, the number of mortalities reportedly exceeded that in the wars of 19th century India.
What is not well known is that this amazing project started in Bangalore and few artifacts from then exist even today, albeit in a state of ruin and unrecognized.
In this talk Udaya Kumar P L, a citizen researcher talks about his attempts to research, trace and document the current state of these artifacts.
You can watch a video recording of the talk at https://youtu.be/PC5WdFJRsvw
