It was the 25 November 1820 when Everest reached Table Bay and the chance to recover from the fevers to which he had succumbed. Little is known of the year he spent there other than the work he did on the meridian arc that had been observed by M. l’Abbé de LaCaille some 70 years earlier. Prior to leaving India he had discussed with William Lambton, the apparent inconsistency between the arc measured at the Cape by LaCaille when compared with the results from various other measures around the world. …

George Everest entered the Bengal Artillery as a Lieutenant on 4 April 1806 before he had even reached his 16th birthday. This rapid promotion was due to the number of vacancies at that time. Little has come to light about the first few years of his service in India until the siege of Kalinjar near Allahabad in 1812…

 
The last issue detailed the celebrations that took place for the anniversary of the birth of Sir George Everest but what do we know of the man? His is a household name because of its link to the mountain but many who are not surveyors either (a) think it is a made-up name for the mountain or (b) are not aware that the mountain was named after a person. I have come across many including such as geography teachers who thought it was a made-up name but we will come …

 
Beginning with this issue, JR Smith traces the life and work of Sir George Everest

My interest in Everest came about in two ways. Firstly in the early 1980s I had the idea of compiling a history of land surveying. It was soon obvious that it was a far too wide a topic to do justice to so I refined it to a history of geodesy – still in itself a large subject but hopefully manageable. Then around late 1989 it was pointed out to me that 1990 would be the …