AN HISTORIC BRACED QUADRILATERAL

Author: Olliver Joe  

Publisher: Maney Publishing

ISSN: 1752-2706

Source: Survey Review, Vol.36, Iss.280, 2001-04, pp. : 142-145

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Abstract

Wherever I happen to be in the world, a small triangle on the map triggers an uncontrollable conditioned response – a trig point! I have go there! And so it happened on a recent holiday in the Sierra Nevada. My eye lighted on the name Mulhacén, adjacent to that symbol. The altitude figure of 3483 metres (11 421 feet) gave some pause – it is the highest point in mainland Spain – but in my surveying days I had climbed almost to that height in Tanganyika and Kenya. But more than the height challenge, there was a romantic association attached to the name Mulhacén. Anyone who has turned the pages of Jordan's Handbuch der Vernlessungskunde [2] will recognise the diagram (Figure 1) showing the vertices of the famous braced quadrilateral constituting the first geodetic connection of Spain to Algeria, or more significantly, Europe to Africa.