Speaker
Description
The director of Padua's Specola from 1878 to 1913, Giuseppe Lorenzoni (1843-1914) became a "full member" of the Italian geodetic commission in June 1873. His meticulous archives allow us to reconstruct the participation of the Regno d’Italia in the operations of "measuring of the European degrees".
What did "geodesic practice" consist of in the second half of the 19th Century?
In this lecture, after recalling some of the major debates that led, in Europe, to the creation of the Mitteleuropäischen Gradmessung in 1864, I will present Lorenzoni papers from which we can understand how he fitted into the major European geodesic operations. A story that illustrates what geodesy was in the second half of the 19th Century and the inextricable links between astronomical sciences and scientific diplomacy.
