Abstract
The practical measurement of distance on land and sea has been of enduring interest for millennia. Here we outline a brief interaction between Francis Galton (1822-1911) and Arthur Cayley (1821-95) in which they too put the ‘geo’ back into geometry.Galton wanted to measure everything. In the adventurous life of this many-sided Victorian scientist, quantification was the hallmark of his work. In measuring geographical distances Galton used an idea suggested by Sir George Everest (1790-1866), the Surveyor-General of India in the 1830s. In the pages of the journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Everest showed how to calculate the distance from one point to an inaccessible point. One application would be to measure the distance from a point on one side of a river to a point on the other side.
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