Royal Prussian Geodetic Institute

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Prussia KingdomKingdom of PrussiaPrussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia Royal Prussian Geodetic Institute
- Kgl. Prussia. Geodesic. Institute -
Consist 1870 - 1917
Incorporated into Prussian Geodetic Institute
Headquarters Berlin , from 1892 Potsdam
president Baeyer , from 1886 Helmert
Seal of the Centralbureau of the International Earth Measurement

The Royal Prussian Geodetic Institute was the superordinate surveying administration of the German states ruled by Prussia from around 1866. It was founded on the model of the Military Geographic Institute, which was established in Vienna from 1800 to 1839 . Despite the momentous war with Austria-Hungary in 1866 , the geodesists and politicians involved succeeded in starting an intergovernmental cooperation between the two internationally important research institutions.

Some of these projects served the agreed Central European degree measurement , the largest measurement project of which was the Grossenhain-Kremsmünster-Pola meridian arc from Saxony via Bohemia and Austria to the Adriatic. Further groundbreaking work by the Prussian Institute was the successive unification of the fragmented German surveying networks and the theoretical investigations on geoid determination , which were carried out mainly by the long-time director of the institute, Friedrich Robert Helmert (1843-1917).

history

The promemoria submitted by Johann Jacob Baeyer and Wilhelm Foerster to the Prussian Ministry of Culture on March 16, 1867 regarding the organization of an institute for advanced measurement leads to the establishment of the institute in Berlin in 1870. However, a place with smoke-free air and a vibration-free floor was required.

From 1889 to 1892, under director Friedrich Robert Helmert, the Royal Geodetic Institute Potsdam was built on Telegrafenberg as a brick building in the classicistic style. Thermally controllable measuring rooms with their own foundation should enable constant measuring conditions for the various experiments in the house all year round.

In the years from 1898 to 1904, mathematicians Friedrich Kühnen (1858–1940) and Philipp Furtwängler succeeded in determining the absolute gravity of the earth with reversion pendulums , which in 1909 became the international reference value.

In 1915/16 Kühnen built the first German tide calculator here with the designer Reipert from the Otto Toepfer & Sohn company in Potsdam on the secret order of the Reichsmarinamt .

See also

literature

  • P. Spieker: The royal observatories for astrophysics, meteorology and geodesy on the Telegrafenberg near Potsdam . In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , Volume 44 (1894), Sp. 1–16, 204–218, 345–370, Tables 1–5, 25–27, 43–47. Digitized

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