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The French Geodesic Mission to the Equator (French: Expédition géodésique française en Équateur), also called the French Geodesic Mission to Peru and the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission, was an 18th-century expedition to what is now Ecuador carried out for the purpose of performing an arc measurement, measuring the length of a degree of latitude near the Equator, by which the Earth's ...
Charles Marie de La Condamine (French: [la kɔ̃damin]; 28 January 1701 – 4 February 1774) was a French explorer, geographer, and mathematician.He spent ten years in territory which is now Ecuador, measuring the length of a degree of latitude at the equator and preparing the first map of the Amazon region based on astro-geodetic observations.
The placement of the equatorial line was defined throughout a 1736 expedition called the French Geodesic Mission.While such studies would later determine the exact measure and shape of the world, astronomers involved missed the possibility of encountering the remnants of highly sophisticated geographical achievements made on “Equatorial” territory for hundreds of years before their arrival.
The final results of French Geodesic Mission, published by La Condamine in 1745, combined with the measurements of meridian arc near the Arctic Circle that had been published in 1738 by Pierre Louis Maupertuis following the French Geodesic Mission to Lapland, decisively vindicated the predictions first made by Isaac Newton in Book III of his ...
From the early 15th century to the early 17th century the Age of Discovery had, through Portuguese seafarers, and later, Spanish, Dutch, French and English, opened up southern Africa, the Americas (New World), Asia and Oceania to European eyes: Bartholomew Dias had sailed around the Cape of southern Africa in search of a trade route to India; Christopher Columbus, on four journeys across the ...
The Toise of Peru had been constructed in 1735 for Bouguer and De La Condamine as their standard of reference in the French Geodesic Mission, conducted in actual Ecuador from 1735 to 1744 in collaboration with the Spanish officers Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. [130] [122] Gravimeter with variant of Repsold pendulum
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The distance from the North Pole to the Equator was then extrapolated from the measurement of the Paris meridian arc between Dunkirk and Barcelona and the length of the metre was established, in relation to the Toise de l'Académie also called toise of Peru, which had been constructed in 1735 for the French Geodesic Mission to Peru, as well as ...