Abstract
This paper describes research carried out both to obtain the location and identify possible vestiges of the old geodetic benchmarks used by the expedition formed by French geodesists Arago and Biot and Spanish geodesists Chaix and Rodríguez, to carry out the prolongation of the meridian arc of the Paris Observatory in the Valencian Community in the early 19th century in order to define the meter as the base unit of length of the International System of Units. Geodetic, historical, and field work methodologies were integrated in the study to obtain scientifically sound results, which include the determination of coordinates of the original geodetic benchmarks and the successful identification of several remains. An outstanding typical error of 0.4″ for the old angular measurements can also be deduced from the analysis. Conversely, several old altitudes were found to have errors or considerably lower accuracies than those expected, around 1 m.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code that support the findings of this study (i.e., geodetic coordinates and programming code) are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the Institut Cartogràfic Valencià. The authors are grateful to the editor and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that helped improve the manuscript.
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Published In
Journal of Surveying Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 3 • August 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 1, 2020
Accepted: Feb 25, 2021
Published online: Apr 26, 2021
Published in print: Aug 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Sep 26, 2021
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