The geography and geology of south-eastern EgyptBall, John
Science
The geography and geology of south-eastern Egypt
Ball, John
Geology -- Egypt; Physical geography -- Egypt
By the combined use of minor triangulation for peaks, and vertical
angulation for points situated along drainage lines, it was found
that far more sketching could be done in a few days at a main station
than would have been possible in the same time by tacheometric work
on the lower ground, and that of greater accuracy. More than half
of the entire detail sketching was in fact done at the main stations.
=Survey of the Coast-line.=
In the earlier portion of the work, _i.e._, north of latitude 24°,
the work on the coast-line was confined to the fixation of prominent
points such as spurs and tips of islands. Some of these were fixed
as intersected points during the triangulation, while others were
determined by observing the depression angle and azimuth to them from
trigonometrical stations of known altitude. In this latter method,
taking the mean coefficient of refraction as 0·13, the formula[78]
employed was
_d_ = 35·497 (θ − √{θ² − 11621 _h_})
where _d_ = distance in metres, θ = depression angle in seconds,
and _h_ = altitude of station in metres. This formula is rather
tedious to work out, though the work is relatively not so great if
a number of points are to be calculated from observations at the
same station. Prominent points having been fixed in this way, the
coast-line north of 24° was sketched in from the Admiralty Chart,
adjusting the longitude to fit the points fixed.
It was sometimes a little difficult, however, to identify the fixed
points on the existing charts, and hence I tried to find some
process of surveying the entire remaining coast-line _de novo_
in detail. Traversing along the coast was placed out of question
by the great expenditure of time and money which it would have
entailed. Eventually I was led to devise a new method, by which long
stretches of coast-line could be mapped by polar co-ordinates from
mountain stations with great speed and accuracy. The directions of
a series of points sufficiently close together along the coast were
taken by theodolite, and the depression angles simultaneously observed
with the vertical circle. Then, instead of computing the distances to
the points, they were plotted by a special scale graduated directly
in angles of dip; by thus doing away with all calculation at the
station, it was possible to lay down the points on the chart as
fast as the observations could be taken, usually at the rate of
four or five points a minute, and it was frequently possible to
map thirty kilometres or more of coast-line in an hour with great
accuracy. As I have given a full account of this new method in
a separate publication,[79] I shall not go into it further here,
but would refer those interested to the publication just mentioned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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