Origins
Surveying techniques have existed throughout much of recorded history. In ancient Egypt, when the Nile River overflowed its banks and washed out farm boundaries, boundaries were re-established through the application of simple geometry. The nearly perfect squareness and north-south orientation of the Great Pyramid of Giza, built c. 2700 BC, affirm the Egyptians' command of surveying.
- The Egyptian land register (3000 BC).
- Under the Romans, land surveyors were established as a profession, and they established the basic measurements under which the empire was divided, such as a tax register of conquered lands (300 AD).
- In England, The Domesday Book by William the Conqueror (1086)
- covered all England
- contained names of the land owners, area, land quality, and specific information of the area's content and habitants.
- did not include maps showing exact locations
- Continental Europe's Cadastre was created in 1808
- founded by Napoleon I (Bonaparte), "A good cadastre will be my greatest achievement in my civil law", Napoleon I
- contained numbers of the parcels of land (or just land), land usage, names etc., and value of the land
- 100 million parcels of land, triangle survey, measurable survey, map scale: 1:2500 and 1:1250
- spread fast around Europe, but faced problems especially in Mediterranean countries, Balkan, and Eastern Europe due to cadastre upkeep costs and troubles.
A cadastre loses its value if register and maps are not constantly updated.
Large-scale surveys are a necessary pre-requisite to map-making. In the late 1780s, a team from the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, originally under General William Roy began the Principal Triangulation of Britain using the specially built Ramsden theodolite.
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