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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 ...
The French Geodesic Mission to Lapland was one of the two geodesic missions carried out in 1736–1737 by the French Academy of Sciences for measuring the shape of the Earth. One expedition was sent to Ecuador to perform measurements near the Equator; the other was sent to Meänmaa to perform measurements near the Arctic Circle.
Thus arose the celebrated French Geodesic Missions , to the Equator and to Lapland, the latter directed by Pierre Louis Maupertuis. [2] Map of France in 1720. In 1740 an account was published in the Paris Mémoires, by Cassini de Thury, of a remeasurement by himself and Nicolas Louis de Lacaille of the meridian of Paris. With a view to ...
Pedro Vicente Maldonado y Flores (November 24, 1704 in Riobamba, Royal Audience of Quito (today's Ecuador) – November 7, 1748 in London, England) was an Ecuadorian scientist who collaborated with the members of the French Geodesic Mission. As well as a physicist and a mathematician, Maldonado was an astronomer, topographer, and geographer.
The subsequent French geodesic missions (1735-1739) to Lapland and Peru corroborated Newton, but also discovered variations in gravity that would eventually lead to the geoid model. A contemporary development was the use of the trigonometric survey to accurately measure distance and location over great distances.