Survey tower
A surveying tower is a tower erected over a trigonometric point , the top of which is used for sighting and often also has an observation platform itself. Numerous surveying towers were erected in Germany in the 1930s. They were often wooden constructions with heights of up to 60 meters, like on the Hirschenstein in Bavaria . Today only a few of these structures exist.
The great towers were necessary because they were visible from a great distance in order to build intermediate points. Since there are now enough intermediate points and the surveying system has largely been switched to GPS , the towers are often no longer necessary.
Construction and use
The tower consists of an outer and an inner tower, which must not touch. The higher outer tower has a signal board at the top that was targeted by the opposite stations. It is not possible to set up such a tower precisely enough above the ground point to be measured. The exact position of the board relative to the actual fixed point on the floor, especially the side shelf, was therefore determined by plumbing. The somewhat lower inner tower carries a heavy post on which the surveying instrument, the theodolite , was placed, with which the opposing stations were targeted. The observer (e.g. surveyor) stood on a platform that was attached to the outer tower so that the stable position of the instrument was not influenced by its weight and movements during work and its position and orientation were not changed as far as possible. This installation point was also plumbed. This enabled the observations (measured values) to be converted (centered) from the standpoint and target point to the center.
Scheme drawing and information text about the tower
