Geodesy solves 900,000 equations simultaneously

Abstract

By combining 19th‐century ideas with 20th‐century computing power, geodesists with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geodetic Survey have succeeded in solving 1.8 million equations (observations) with 900,000 unknowns. This is one of the largest (if not the largest) systems of equations that have been solved simultaneously. This feat results in a geodetic network for North America that is one of the best of its kind in the world. The mammoth project took about 350 staff years of effort over a period of 12 years.