Oskar Schreiber (geodesist)

Oskar Karl August Heinrich Schreiber (born February 17, 1829 in Stolzenau , † July 14, 1905 in Hanover ) was a Prussian lieutenant general as well as geodesist and head of the regional survey .

Life

Origin and family

Oskar was the son of the bailiff Georg Karl Wilhelm Schreiber († 1843) and his wife Sophie, née Lunde († 1862).

He married Hermine Wiepking (1832–1875) in Goslar in 1861 . He went into a second marriage in 1881 in Göttingen with Maria Karoline Elwira Amalie Mejer (1855–1926). A total of five children were born to him, of which the son Oskar (1868-1936) worked as a teacher of geodesy at the University of Cape Town and Otto (1882-1929) as a professor at the University of Königsberg .

career

After attending grammar school in Clausthal and the polytechnic university in Hanover , he joined the Hanover Guard Jäger Battalion as a volunteer cadet in 1848 . In 1849 he was promoted to second lieutenant in the 1st Jäger Battalion and in 1852 to prime lieutenant . He was an inspection officer in the Cadet Corps in 1856 and was promoted to captain in 1866 . In the war against Prussia he was slightly wounded near Langensalza and received his departure from the Hanoverian army on New Year 1867 .

At the beginning of March 1867, Schreiber was taken over as a captain in the Prussian Army and initially aggregated to the 3rd Westphalian Infantry Regiment No. 16 and assigned in December. Also in December 1867 he was assigned to the Great General Staff for the purpose of national triangulation . Schreiber was led in March 1868 under position à la suite of the Infantry Regiment No. 16 in the side budget of the Great General Staff and had been surveying conductor since April of that year. In the Franco-Prussian War he took part in the siege of Metz , the battle of Beaune-la-Rolande , as well as the battles at Bellevue , where he was again slightly wounded, Les Cotelles, Vendôme, Tours and St. Amand. In April 1871 he returned to the secondary budget with the Great General Staff and was placed à la suite of the 7th Westphalian Infantry Regiment No. 56 while retaining his position . At the beginning of 1873 he received the Iron Cross II. Class and advanced to major . In 1875 he was entrusted with the management of the business as head of the trigonometric department, rose to lieutenant colonel in 1879 and in 1879 received the position of chief in the secondary budget of the great general staff. Promoted to colonel in 1882 was followed by the presentation of the Crown II. Class, rank as brigade commander with perception of business as head of the country's record and was promoted to major general , all in 1888. The Red Eagle has II. Class with oak leaves it in March and received his promotion to lieutenant general in November 1890. In January 1892 he was awarded the star for the Order of the Red Eagle, 2nd class, and on March 25, 1893, he was put up for disposal with a pension , and was awarded the Order of the Crown, 1st class.

Life's work

From 1866, the surveying network was continued under him from Prussia to the west. For this purpose, Schreiber developed some very innovative formula systems for the main geodetic task of calculating coordinates on the earth's ellipsoid .

The previous parts of the West German triangulation highlighted under Schreiber are called "Schreiberscher Block". This large network of the first order is geographically limited: in the south by the Main and in the east by the Hof (Saale) - Flensburg line . A number of other connections were only made in the 20th century (e.g. southwest, Bavaria and parts of Lower Saxony).

Schreiber's achievement is to have created an (almost) nationwide measuring network over the German states for the first time. Its logarithmic series developments to ellipsoidal geometry have been replaced by direct numerical formulas since the increasing use of computers .

The philosophy faculty of the University of Berlin awarded him an honorary doctorate on March 25, 1893 .

See also

• Land surveying , reference ellipsoid , mathematical geodesy
• geodetic datum , DHDN , DHHN , MGI , ellipsoidal coordinates

literature

• Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldier leadership . Volume 8, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1941], DNB 367632837 , pp. 177-180, no. 2557.
• Wolfgang Torge : The long way to the Prussian land survey: on the 100th anniversary of the death of Oscar Schreiber (1829–1905). In: Journal of Surveying. 130th year (2005), pp. 359-371.
• Quarterly magazine of the Astronomical Society. Vol. 39, Leipzig 1904, pp. 661-662.