Kabru is a mountain in the Himalayas on the border of eastern Nepal and India . It is part of a ridge that extends south from Kangchenjunga and is the southernmost 7,000 metres (23,000 ft) peak in the world.
124-507: The main features of this ridge are as follows (north to south): To the south west of Kabru south, there is a 6400 m saddle and a 6682 m summit known as Rathong. To its south east is the 6600 m Kabru Dome. The 7338 m summit of Kabru is the site of a mountaineering altitude record , either in 1883 or in 1905. The English barrister William Graham , the Swiss hotelier Emil Boss and the Swiss mountain guide Ulrich Kaufmann reported to have reached
248-509: A Swabian and Tyrolean flag on top. In 1931 the summit record was broken again with the ascent of Kamet . Frank Smythe , Eric Shipton , R.L. Holdsworth and Lewa Sherpa reached the summit on 21 June. At 7,756 m (25,446 ft), Kamet was the first mountain over 7,500 m and 25,000 ft to be climbed. The summit record was raised once more before the Second World War brought an effective halt to mountaineering in
372-624: A Central Office, located at the Prussian Geodetic Institute, whose management was entrusted to Johann Jacob Baeyer. Baeyer's goal was a new determination of anomalies in the shape of the Earth using precise triangulations, combined with gravity measurements. This involved determining the geoid by means of gravimetric and leveling measurements, in order to deduce the exact knowledge of the terrestrial spheroid while taking into account local variations. To resolve this problem, it
496-469: A group of Serbian climbers unsuccessfully attempted to climb the west face of Kabru South. A series of avalanches forced the group to give up their goal. The north-northwest pillar of Talung was first climbed in 2015 by two Ukrainian climbers, Mikhail Fomin and Nikita Balabanov, who won the Piolet d'Or for their climb. It was the fifth ascent of Talung. World altitude record (mountaineering) In
620-916: A metre "too short" compared to a more general definition taken from the average of a large number of arcs. As early as 1861, Johann Jacob Baeyer sent a memorandum to the King of Prussia recommending international collaboration in Central Europe with the aim of determining the shape and dimensions of the Earth. At the time of its creation, the association had sixteen member countries: Austrian Empire , Kingdom of Belgium , Denmark , seven German states ( Grand Duchy of Baden , Kingdom of Bavaria , Kingdom of Hanover , Mecklenburg , Kingdom of Prussia , Kingdom of Saxony , Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ), Kingdom of Italy , Netherlands , Russian Empire (for Poland ), United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway , as well as Switzerland . The Central European Arc Measurement created
744-631: A new value for the flattening of the Earth, which he determinated as 1 / 299.15 . He also devised a new instrument for measuring gravitational acceleration which was first used in Switzerland by Emile Plantamour , Charles Sanders Peirce , and Isaac-Charles Élisée Cellérier (8.01.1818 – 2.10.1889), a Genevan mathematician soon independently discovered a mathematical formula to correct systematic errors of this device which had been noticed by Plantamour and Adolphe Hirsch . This allowed Friedrich Robert Helmert to determine
868-709: A part of the Survey of the Coast. He compared various units of length used in the United States at that time and measured coefficients of expansion to assess temperature effects on the measurements. In 1832, Carl Friedrich Gauss studied the Earth's magnetic field and proposed adding the second to the basic units of the metre and the kilogram in the form of the CGS system ( centimetre , gram , second). In 1836, he founded
992-626: A point 30-40 feet below this summit, which Graham described as "little more than a pillar of ice", at 2pm on October 8, 1883. The ascent was questioned by powerful members of the Alpine Club and the Indian Survey Department, though not by their Himalayan climbing colleagues, and has been dismissed for most of the time since. Recent analysis suggests that the mountaineers may have been correct in their assertions after all. If Graham, Boss and Kaufmann did climb to ~7325 m on Kabru it
1116-554: A prototype metre bar, distribute national metric prototypes, and maintain comparisons between them and non-metric measurement standards. The organisation distributed such bars in 1889 at the first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM: Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures ), establishing the International Prototype Metre as the distance between two lines on a standard bar composed of an alloy of 90% platinum and 10% iridium , measured at
1240-495: A remarkably accurate value of 1 / 298.3 for the flattening of the Earth when he proposed his ellipsoid of reference in 1901. This was also the result of the Metre Convention of 1875, when the metre was adopted as an international scientific unit of length for the convenience of continental European geodesists following the example of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler . In 1790, one year before it
1364-668: A series of international conferences was held to devise new metric standards. When a conflict broke out regarding the presence of impurities in the metre-alloy of 1874, a member of the Preparatory Committee since 1870 and Spanish representative at the Paris Conference in 1875, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero intervened with the French Academy of Sciences to rally France to the project to create an International Bureau of Weights and Measures equipped with
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#17327726971431488-457: A short distance before. This was an altitude record which would not be broken, with certainty, until the 1950s, or without supplemental oxygen until 1978. Three days later George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared while making their own attempt on the summit. There has been much debate over whether they reached a greater height than Norton, or even the summit; professional climbers such as Conrad Anker believe Mallory and Irvine traversed "from
1612-602: A spirited defense of the ascent in the Alpine Journal , arguing that Graham and Boss's criticism of the maps of the Garhwal Himalaya had led to bad blood. If Graham, Boss and Kaufmann did climb Kabru it was a remarkable achievement for its time, establishing an altitude record which was not broken for twenty-six years. Nine years later, another claim to the world altitude record was made by Martin Conway in
1736-629: A standard metre made in Paris to the United States in October 1805. He designed a baseline apparatus which instead of bringing different bars in actual contact during measurements, used only one bar calibrated on the metre and optical contact. Thus the metre became the unit of length for geodesy in the United States. In 1830, Hassler became head of the Office of Weights and Measures, which became
1860-574: A standard of length. By 1925, interferometry was in regular use at the BIPM. However, the International Prototype Metre remained the standard until 1960, when the eleventh CGPM defined the metre in the new International System of Units (SI) as equal to 1 650 763 .73 wavelengths of the orange - red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in vacuum . To further reduce uncertainty,
1984-423: A standard would be independent of any changes in the dimensions of the earth, and should be adopted by those who expect their writings to be more permanent than that body. Charles Sanders Peirce 's work promoted the advent of American science at the forefront of global metrology. Alongside his intercomparisons of artifacts of the metre and contributions to gravimetry through improvement of reversible pendulum, Peirce
2108-734: Is also found in Latin ( metior, mensura ), French ( mètre, mesure ), English and other languages. The Greek word is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *meh₁- 'to measure'. The motto ΜΕΤΡΩ ΧΡΩ ( metro chro ) in the seal of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), which was a saying of the Greek statesman and philosopher Pittacus of Mytilene and may be translated as "Use measure!", thus calls for both measurement and moderation. The use of
2232-478: Is currently one limiting factor in laboratory realisations of the metre, and it is several orders of magnitude poorer than that of the second, based upon the caesium fountain atomic clock ( U = 5 × 10 ). Consequently, a realisation of the metre is usually delineated (not defined) today in labs as 1 579 800 .762 042 (33) wavelengths of helium–neon laser light in vacuum, the error stated being only that of frequency determination. This bracket notation expressing
2356-544: Is estimated at between 7,000 m (23,000 ft) and 7,300 m (24,000 ft), greater than the height of Aconcagua. In 1907 Longstaff and the Brocherel brothers returned to the Himalayas and led an expedition with the aim of climbing Nanda Devi , but unable to penetrate its "sanctuary" of surrounding peaks turned their attention to Trisul , which they climbed on June 12. At 7,120 metres (23,360 ft) Trisul became
2480-421: The 1950 French Annapurna expedition . Both Herzog and Lachenal lost their toes to frostbite ; Herzog also lost most of his fingers. The first attempt to climb Everest from the south was made by a Swiss team in 1952. The expedition's high point was reached by Raymond Lambert and the team's Nepali Indian sardar Tenzing Norgay on 26 May, when they reached a point approximately 200 m (650 ft) below
2604-1027: The Bavarian brothers Adolf and Robert Schlagintweit of the Magnetic Survey of India made an attempt to climb Kamet (7,756 m), in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand , India, near the Tibetan border. Spending 10 days above 17,000 ft (5,200 m) they approached the mountain from the Tibetan side, climbing the northwest ridge of the subsidiary peak Abi Gamin . From their highest camp at 19,325 ft (5,890 m), they and some of their guides and carriers reached an altitude of 22,259 ft (6,785 m) according to their barometric measurements, which would have put them higher than Llullaillaco. Many early claims of world altitude records are muddied by incomplete surveying and lack of knowledge of local geography, which have led to reassessments of many of
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#17327726971432728-642: The British Crown . Instead of the seconds pendulum method, the commission of the French Academy of Sciences – whose members included Borda , Lagrange , Laplace , Monge , and Condorcet – decided that the new measure should be equal to one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator , determined through measurements along the meridian passing through Paris. Apart from
2852-601: The Committee Meter in the United States and served as standard of length in the United States Coast Survey until 1890. According to geodesists, these standards were secondary standards deduced from the Toise of Peru. In Europe, except Spain, surveyors continued to use measuring instruments calibrated on the Toise of Peru. Among these, the toise of Bessel and the apparatus of Borda were respectively
2976-562: The International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299 792 458 of a second , where the second is defined by a hyperfine transition frequency of caesium . The metre was originally defined in 1791 by the French National Assembly as one ten-millionth of the distance from
3100-653: The North Sea and the Baltic Sea in the north. In his mind, the cooperation of all the States of Central Europe could open the field to scientific research of the highest interest, research that each State, taken in isolation, was not able to undertake. Spain and Portugal joined the European Arc Measurement in 1866. French Empire hesitated for a long time before giving in to the demands of
3224-447: The equator to the North Pole along a great circle , so the Earth's polar circumference is approximately 40 000 km . In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar, the bar used was changed in 1889, and in 1960 the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86 . The current definition was adopted in 1983 and modified slightly in 2002 to clarify that
3348-495: The luminiferous aether in 1905, just as Newton had questioned Descartes' Vortex theory in 1687 after Jean Richer 's pendulum experiment in Cayenne , French Guiana . Furthermore, special relativity changed conceptions of time and mass , while general relativity changed that of space . According to Newton, space was Euclidean , infinite and without boundaries and bodies gravitated around each other without changing
3472-615: The radius of the Earth was the unit to which all celestial distances were to be referred. Indeed, Earth proved to be an oblate spheroid through geodetic surveys in Ecuador and Lapland and this new data called into question the value of Earth radius as Picard had calculated it. After the Anglo-French Survey , the French Academy of Sciences commissioned an expedition led by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre Méchain , lasting from 1792 to 1798, which measured
3596-514: The 17th CGPM in 1983 replaced the definition of the metre with its current definition, thus fixing the length of the metre in terms of the second and the speed of light : This definition fixed the speed of light in vacuum at exactly 299 792 458 metres per second (≈ 300 000 km/s or ≈1.079 billion km/hour ). An intended by-product of the 17th CGPM's definition was that it enabled scientists to compare lasers accurately using frequency, resulting in wavelengths with one-fifth
3720-630: The 1860s, at the initiative of Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero who would become the first president of both the International Geodetic Association and the International Committee for Weights and Measure , to remeasure the arc of meridian from Dunkirk to Formentera and to extend it from Shetland to the Sahara . This did not pave the way to a new definition of the metre because it was known that
3844-593: The 19th century by the modernist impetus of Muhammad Ali who founded in Sabtieh, Boulaq district, in Cairo an Observatory which he was keen to keep in harmony with the progress of this science still in progress. In 1858, a Technical Commission was set up to continue, by adopting the procedures instituted in Europe, the cadastre work inaugurated under Muhammad Ali. This Commission suggested to Viceroy Mohammed Sa'id Pasha
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3968-482: The 8,848.86 metres (29,031.7 ft) true summit on 29 May 1953, marking the final chapter in the history of the mountaineering altitude record. While the exact height of Everest's summit is subject to minor variation due to the level of snow cover and the gradual upthrust of the Himalaya, significant changes to the world altitude record are now impossible. Female mountaineers were rare in the early 20th century, and
4092-722: The Association, which asked the French geodesists to take part in its work. It was only after the Franco-Prussian War , that Charles-Eugène Delaunay represented France at the Congress of Vienna in 1871. In 1874, Hervé Faye was appointed member of the Permanent Commission which was presided by Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero. The International Geodetic Association gained global importance with
4216-600: The Central European Arc Measurement (German: Mitteleuropaïsche Gradmessung ) on the initiative of Johann Jacob Baeyer in 1863, and by that of the International Meteorological Organisation whose president, the Swiss meteorologist and physicist, Heinrich von Wild would represent Russia at the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM). In 1834, Hassler, measured at Fire Island
4340-750: The Equator . When the final result was known, a bar whose length was closest to the meridional definition of the metre was selected and placed in the National Archives on 22 June 1799 (4 messidor An VII in the Republican calendar) as a permanent record of the result. In 1816, Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler was appointed first Superintendent of the Survey of the Coast . Trained in geodesy in Switzerland, France and Germany , Hassler had brought
4464-533: The First Step to the Second” step, placing them 100ft higher at 28,226ft than Edward Norton's climb, but as there is no direct proof they are not generally credited with a record. The British made several further expeditions to Mount Everest in the 1930s. Twice in 1933 climbing parties reached approximately the same point as Norton; first Lawrence Wager and Percy Wyn-Harris , and later Frank Smythe , but there
4588-424: The French Academy of Sciences a report drafted by Otto Wilhelm von Struve , Heinrich von Wild , and Moritz von Jacobi , whose theorem has long supported the assumption of an ellipsoid with three unequal axes for the figure of the Earth, inviting his French counterpart to undertake joint action to ensure the universal use of the metric system in all scientific work. In the 1870s and in light of modern precision,
4712-711: The German born, Swiss astronomer, Adolphe Hirsch conformed to the opinion of Italy and Spain to create, in spite of French reluctance, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in France as a permanent institution at the disadventage of the Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers . At that time, units of measurement were defined by primary standards , and unique artifacts made of different alloys with distinct coefficients of expansion were
4836-441: The Himalaya yaks have been reported at heights of up to 6,100 m (20,000 ft) and the summer snow line can be as high as 6,500 m (21,300 ft). It is likely that local inhabitants went to such heights in search of game, and possibly higher while exploring trade routes, but they did not live there, and there is no evidence that they attempted to climb the summits of the Himalaya before the arrival of Europeans. In August 1855,
4960-593: The Himalaya. Nanda Devi , at 7,816 m (25,643 ft) the highest mountain wholly within the British Empire , had been the object of several expeditions, and it was finally climbed on 29 August 1936 by Bill Tilman and Noel Odell . After the Second World War, the formerly closed and secretive kingdom of Nepal , wary of the intentions of the People's Republic of China and seeking friends in
5084-520: The Magnetischer Verein, the first international scientific association, in collaboration with Alexander von Humboldt and Wilhelm Edouard Weber . The coordination of the observation of geophysical phenomena such as the Earth's magnetic field, lightning and gravity in different points of the globe stimulated the creation of the first international scientific associations. The foundation of the Magnetischer Verein would be followed by that of
Kabru - Misplaced Pages Continue
5208-547: The North Pole to the Equator was then extrapolated from the measurement of the Paris meridian arc between Dunkirk and Barcelona and was determined as 5 130 740 toises. As the metre had to be equal to one ten-millionth of this distance, it was defined as 0.513074 toise or 3 feet and 11.296 lines of the Toise of Peru, which had been constructed in 1735 for the French Geodesic Mission to
5332-476: The Norwegians Carl W. Rubenson and Monrad Aas came within 50 m of climbing it. Notably, Rubenson and Aas believed that Kauffmann, Boss and Graham had reached the same point 24 years before. The summit of this peak, Kabru North, was first reached by C.R.Cooke on 18 November 1935, without oxygen, after his Swiss companion Gustav Schoberth succumbed to altitude sickness at their highest camp. It remained
5456-641: The South Summit before turning around in the knowledge that they would not reach the summit in daylight. Their estimated height of 8,600 m (28,210 ft) was slightly higher than the previous altitude record set by the British on the north side of the mountain. The Swiss made further attempts later in May, and again in autumn after the monsoon , but did not regain Lambert and Tenzing's high point. Mount Everest
5580-736: The Spanish standard had been compared with Borda 's double-toise N° 1, which served as a comparison module for the measurement of all geodesic bases in France, and was also to be compared to the Ibáñez apparatus. In 1954, the connection of the southerly extension of the Struve Geodetic Arc with an arc running northwards from South Africa through Egypt would bring the course of a major meridian arc back to land where Eratosthenes had founded geodesy . Seventeen years after Bessel calculated his ellipsoid of reference , some of
5704-590: The Swiss physicist Charles-Edouard Guillaume , was granted the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1920. Guillaume's Nobel Prize marked the end of an era in which metrology was leaving the field of geodesy to become a technological application of physics . In 1921, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to another Swiss scientist, Albert Einstein , who following Michelson–Morley experiment had questioned
5828-501: The Toise of Peru, one for Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve , a second for Heinrich Christian Schumacher in 1821 and a third for Friedrich Bessel in 1823. In 1831, Henri-Prudence Gambey also realized a copy of the Toise of Peru which was kept at Altona Observatory . In the second half of the 19th century, the creation of the International Geodetic Association would mark the adoption of new scientific methods. It then became possible to accurately measure parallel arcs, since
5952-641: The United States and the Philippines which use meter . Measuring devices (such as ammeter , speedometer ) are spelled "-meter" in all variants of English. The suffix "-meter" has the same Greek origin as the unit of length. The etymological roots of metre can be traced to the Greek verb μετρέω ( metreo ) ((I) measure, count or compare) and noun μέτρον ( metron ) (a measure), which were used for physical measurement, for poetic metre and by extension for moderation or avoiding extremism (as in "be measured in your response"). This range of uses
6076-564: The West, began to open its borders. For the first time its peaks, including the south side of Everest, became accessible to Western mountaineers, triggering a new wave of exploration. There was one further improvement on the summit record before Everest was conquered. On 3 June 1950 Annapurna (8,091 m, 26,545 ft) became the first 8,000 m mountain to be climbed when the French climbers Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal reached its summit on
6200-416: The accession of Chile , Mexico and Japan in 1888; Argentina and United-States in 1889; and British Empire in 1898. The convention of the International Geodetic Association expired at the end of 1916. It was not renewed due to the First World War . However, the activities of the International Latitude Service were continued through an Association Géodesique réduite entre États neutres thanks to
6324-410: The altitude record, was broken by 8 meters on June 14, 1911, when the Scottish chemist, explorer, and mountaineer Alec Kellas together with the Sherpas "Sony" and "Tuny's brother" climbed the 7,128 metres (23,386 ft) high Pauhunri on the border of Sikkim and Tibet . Until the late 20th century this mountain was thought to be only 7,065 metres (23,179 ft), so this record was not realized at
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#17327726971436448-519: The course of his expedition to the Karakoram in 1892. Together with Matthias Zurbriggen and Charles Granville Bruce , Conway made an attempt on Baltoro Kangri and on 25 August reached a subsidiary summit which he named Pioneer Peak . The barometer showed a height of 22,600 ft (6,900 m) which Conway optimistically rounded up to 23,000 ft (over 7,000 m). However, Pioneer Peak has since been measured at only 6,501 metres (21,329 ft). On 14 January 1897, Matthias Zurbriggen went on to make
6572-412: The creation of the Office of Standard Weights and Measures in 1830. In continental Europe , Napoleonic Wars fostered German nationalism which later led to unification of Germany in 1871. Meanwhile, most European countries had adopted the metre. In the 1870s, German Empire played a pivotal role in the unification of the metric system through the European Arc Measurement but its overwhelming influence
6696-470: The creation of the Office of Standard Weights and Measures as an office within the Coast Survey contributed to the introduction of the Metric Act of 1866 allowing the use of the metre in the United States, and preceded the choice of the metre as international scientific unit of length and the proposal by the European Arc Measurement (German: Europäische Gradmessung ) to establish a "European international bureau for weights and measures". In 1867 at
6820-406: The data available at the time, Ritter came to the conclusion that the problem was only resolved in an approximate manner, the data appearing too scant, and for some affected by vertical deflections , in particular the latitude of Montjuïc in the French meridian arc which determination had also been affected in a lesser proportion by systematic errors of the repeating circle . The definition of
6944-488: The determination of the distance from Earth to the Sun by Giovanni Domenico Cassini . They both also used a determination of the size of the Earth, then considered as a sphere, by Jean Picard through triangulation of Paris meridian . In 1671, Jean Picard also measured the length of a seconds pendulum at Paris Observatory and proposed this unit of measurement to be called the astronomical radius (French: Rayon Astronomique ). In 1675, Tito Livio Burattini suggested
7068-418: The difference in longitude between their ends could be determined thanks to the invention of the electrical telegraph . Furthermore, advances in metrology combined with those of gravimetry have led to a new era of geodesy . If precision metrology had needed the help of geodesy, the latter could not continue to prosper without the help of metrology. It was then necessary to define a single unit to express all
7192-500: The discovery of the bodies of three children at the 6,739 m (22,110 ft) summit of Llullaillaco in South America : Inca sacrifices dated to around AD 1500. There is no direct evidence that the Incas reached higher points, but the discovery of the skeleton of a guanaco on the summit ridge of Aconcagua (6,962 m, 22,841 ft) suggests that they also climbed on that mountain, and the possibility of Pre-Columbian ascents of South America's highest peak cannot be ruled out. In
7316-451: The distance between a belfry in Dunkirk and Montjuïc castle in Barcelona at the longitude of the Paris Panthéon . When the length of the metre was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator , the flattening of the Earth ellipsoid was assumed to be 1 / 334 . In 1841, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel using the method of least squares calculated from several arc measurements
7440-432: The east face of Kabru is less readily dismissed. Although their report of views of Mount Everest from the top appears convincing, Graham's description of the ascent was also vague, and this, coupled with the speed of their claimed ascent and his failure to report significant effects of altitude sickness , have led many to assume that here they also climbed a lower peak in the same area. Their claim was, however, supported in
7564-411: The efforts of H.G. van de Sande Bakhuyzen and Raoul Gautier (1854–1931), respectively directors of Leiden Observatory and Geneva Observatory . After the French Revolution , Napoleonic Wars led to the adoption of the metre in Latin America following independence of Brazil and Hispanic America , while the American Revolution prompted the foundation of the Survey of the Coast in 1807 and
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#17327726971437688-484: The error is explained in the article on measurement uncertainty . Practical realisation of the metre is subject to uncertainties in characterising the medium, to various uncertainties of interferometry, and to uncertainties in measuring the frequency of the source. A commonly used medium is air, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has set up an online calculator to convert wavelengths in vacuum to wavelengths in air. As described by NIST, in air,
7812-519: The first baseline of the Survey of the Coast, shortly before Louis Puissant declared to the French Academy of Sciences in 1836 that Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre Méchain had made errors in the meridian arc measurement , which had been used to determine the length of the metre. Errors in the method of calculating the length of the Paris meridian were taken into account by Bessel when he proposed his reference ellipsoid in 1841. Egyptian astronomy has ancient roots which were revived in
7936-456: The first ascent of Aoraki / Mount Cook in New Zealand . Among others, they claimed a near ascent of Dunagiri (reaching about 6,900 m), an ascent of Changabang (6,864 m, 22,520 ft) in July in the Garhwal Himalaya, and an ascent to 30 feet below the east summit of Kabru 7,338 metres (24,075 ft) south of Kangchenjunga in October, but most of the ascents are disputed. It is not claimed that they lied about their ascents, rather that
8060-534: The first ascent of Gyalgen Peak , 6,151 m (20,180 ft). In 1959, Phantog of the Chinese female mountaineering team reached the summit of Muztagh Ata at 7,509 m (24,636 ft). Phantog later went on to become the second woman to summit Mount Everest 11 days after Junko Tabei. The first female ascent of an 8000 m peak came in 1974, when three Japanese women, Masako Uchida , Mieko Mori and Naoko Nakaseko climbed Manaslu , at 8,163 m (26,781 ft). A year later Junko Tabei of Japan made
8184-406: The first female ascent of Mount Everest on 16 May 1975. The highest mountain to have had a female first ascent is Gasherbrum III , 7,946 m (26,070 ft), which was first climbed by Alison Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz and Wanda Rutkiewicz (along with two male climbers) in August 1975. Metre The metre (or meter in US spelling ; symbol: m ) is the base unit of length in
8308-516: The first recorded ascent of Aconcagua in the Andes. Aconcagua is 6,962 metres (22,841 ft) high and, if the claims of Boss and Graham are discounted, was still the highest point to have been reached at that time. It was several more years before the 7,000 m barrier would be broken with reasonable certainty. In July 1905 Tom George Longstaff , accompanied by the alpine guides Alexis and Henri Brocherel from Courmayeur and six local porters, made an attempt on Gurla Mandhata . The height they reached
8432-451: The first woman to exceed 7000 m when she climbed Sia Kangri (7,422 m (24,350 ft)). Her summit record would stand for 25 years, though her altitude record was broken by the French climber Claude Kogan , who reached approximately 7,600 m (24,900 ft) on Cho Oyu in 1954. The following year saw the first all-female team to visit the Himalayas, made up of Monica Jackson , Evelyn McNicol and Elizabeth "Betty" Stark , making
8556-479: The following years by climbers such as Douglas Freshfield , Norman Collie , Edmund Garwood , Carl Rubenson , and Tom Longstaff , and more recently Walt Unsworth has argued that as a man who was more interested in climbing than in making observations, the vagueness of his description is to be expected, and that now Everest has been climbed in a single day without oxygen, his claims sound less outlandish than they once did. In 2009, Willy Blaser and Glyn Hughes wrote
8680-435: The heights which were originally claimed. In 1862 a khalasi (an Indian assistant of the GTS ) climbed Shilla , a summit in Himachal Pradesh which was claimed to be over 7,000 m (23,000 ft) high. More recent surveys have, however, fixed its height at 6,111 m (20,049 ft). Three years later William Johnson of the GTS claimed to have climbed a 7,284 m (23,898 ft) peak during an illicit journey into China , but
8804-471: The highest solo climb until 1953. Talung (7349) was first climbed on May 18, 1964, by Franz Lindner and Tensing Nindra of a German expedition via the West Flank and South Col. Their original plan to climb the high point of Kabru (p.7412) from the 6983 m col had to be abandoned. On May 10, 1994, 12 members of a large Indian Army expedition led by Major A. Abbey reached the summit of Kabru North (p. 7338). Four more climbers would reach this summit on May 13. From
8928-598: The highest summit to have been climbed whose height was accurately known and whose ascent was undisputed. This altitude record, though not the summit record, was broken a few months later, on 20 October 1907, when the Norwegians Carl Wilhelm Rubenson and Ingvald Monrad Aas came within 50 m of ascending the 7338 m east summit of Kabru . It is noteworthy that Carl Rubenson afterwards believed that Graham, Boss and Kaufmann had ascended that summit 24 years before. An undisputed new altitude record
9052-505: The history of mountaineering , the world altitude record referred to the highest point on the Earth's surface which had been reached, regardless of whether that point was an actual summit . The world summit record referred to the highest mountain to have been successfully climbed. The terms are most commonly used in relation to the history of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges, though modern evidence suggests that it
9176-462: The idea of buying geodetic devices which were ordered in France. While Mahmud Ahmad Hamdi al-Falaki was in charge, in Egypt, of the direction of the work of the general map, the viceroy entrusted to Ismail Mustafa al-Falaki the study, in Europe, of the precision apparatus calibrated against the metre intended to measure the geodesic bases and already built by Jean Brunner in Paris. Ismail Mustafa had
9300-400: The legal basis of units of length. A wrought iron ruler, the Toise of Peru, also called Toise de l'Académie , was the French primary standard of the toise, and the metre was officially defined by an artifact made of platinum kept in the National Archives. Besides the latter, another platinum and twelve iron standards of the metre were made by Étienne Lenoir in 1799. One of them became known as
9424-421: The length of a metre in the 1790s was founded upon Arc measurements in France and Peru with a definition that it was to be 1/40 millionth of the circumference of the earth measured through the poles. Such were the inaccuracies of that period that within a matter of just a few years more reliable measurements would have given a different value for the definition of this international standard. That does not invalidate
9548-601: The main references for geodesy in Prussia and in France . These measuring devices consisted of bimetallic rulers in platinum and brass or iron and zinc fixed together at one extremity to assess the variations in length produced by any change in temperature. The combination of two bars made of two different metals allowed to take thermal expansion into account without measuring the temperature. A French scientific instrument maker, Jean Nicolas Fortin , had made three direct copies of
9672-474: The maximum height attained by a woman lagged behind that claimed by male climbers. The first woman to climb extensively in the Karakoram was Fanny Bullock Workman , who made a number of ascents, including that of Pinnacle Peak, a 6,930 m (22,740 ft) subsidiary summit of Nun Kun , in 1906. Her claim on the women's altitude record was challenged by Annie Smith Peck in 1908 after she made an ascent of
9796-452: The meantime, the commission of the French Academy of Sciences calculated a provisional value from older surveys of 443.44 lignes. This value was set by legislation on 7 April 1795. In 1799, a commission including Johan Georg Tralles , Jean Henri van Swinden , Adrien-Marie Legendre and Jean-Baptiste Delambre calculated the distance from Dunkirk to Barcelona using the data of the triangulation between these two towns and determined
9920-536: The measurements of terrestrial arcs and all determinations of the gravitational acceleration by means of pendulum. In 1866, the most important concern was that the Toise of Peru, the standard of the toise constructed in 1735 for the French Geodesic Mission to the Equator , might be so much damaged that comparison with it would be worthless, while Bessel had questioned the accuracy of copies of this standard belonging to Altona and Koenigsberg Observatories, which he had compared to each other about 1840. This assertion
10044-691: The measuring devices designed by Borda and used for this survey also raised hopes for a more accurate determination of the length of this meridian arc. The task of surveying the Paris meridian arc took more than six years (1792–1798). The technical difficulties were not the only problems the surveyors had to face in the convulsed period of the aftermath of the French Revolution: Méchain and Delambre, and later Arago , were imprisoned several times during their surveys, and Méchain died in 1804 of yellow fever, which he contracted while trying to improve his original results in northern Spain. In
10168-462: The melting point of ice. The comparison of the new prototypes of the metre with each other involved the development of special measuring equipment and the definition of a reproducible temperature scale. The BIPM's thermometry work led to the discovery of special alloys of iron–nickel, in particular invar , whose practically negligible coefficient of expansion made it possible to develop simpler baseline measurement methods, and for which its director,
10292-405: The meridian arcs the German astronomer had used for his calculation had been enlarged. This was a very important circumstance because the influence of errors due to vertical deflections was minimized in proportion to the length of the meridian arcs: the longer the meridian arcs, the more precise the image of the Earth ellipsoid would be. After Struve Geodetic Arc measurement, it was resolved in
10416-484: The metre in any way but highlights the fact that continuing improvements in instrumentation made better measurements of the earth’s size possible. It was well known that by measuring the latitude of two stations in Barcelona , Méchain had found that the difference between these latitudes was greater than predicted by direct measurement of distance by triangulation and that he did not dare to admit this inaccuracy. This
10540-553: The metre in replacement of the toise of Bessel, the creation of an International Metre Commission, and the foundation of a World institute for the comparison of geodetic standards, the first step towards the creation of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures . Hassler's metrological and geodetic work also had a favourable response in Russia. In 1869, the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences sent to
10664-458: The metre is a measure of proper length . From 1983 until 2019, the metre was formally defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum in 1 / 299 792 458 of a second . After the 2019 revision of the SI , this definition was rephrased to include the definition of a second in terms of the caesium frequency Δ ν Cs . This series of amendments did not alter
10788-580: The mountain he climbed has since been measured at 6,710 m (22,014 ft). The first pure mountaineers (as opposed to surveyors) to have climbed in the Himalaya were the English barrister William Graham , the Swiss hotelier Emil Boss and the Swiss mountain guide Ulrich Kaufmann , who together climbed extensively in the area in 1883. The previous year Graham had made the first ascent of the Dent du Géant , and Boss and Kaufmann had equally notably very nearly made
10912-497: The north peak of Huascarán , which she claimed was higher than Pinnacle Peak. The ensuing controversy was bitter and public, and eventually resolved in Bullock Workman's favour when she hired a team of surveyors to measure the height of Huascarán. The north peak was found to be 6,648 m (21,811 ft) tall - some 600 m lower than Smith Peck's estimate. In 1934 Hettie Dyhrenfurth , wife of Günter Dyhrenfurth , became
11036-402: The number of wavelengths of laser light of one of the standard types that fit into the length, and converting the selected unit of wavelength to metres. Three major factors limit the accuracy attainable with laser interferometers for a length measurement: Of these, the last is peculiar to the interferometer itself. The conversion of a length in wavelengths to a length in metres is based upon
11160-455: The obvious consideration of safe access for French surveyors, the Paris meridian was also a sound choice for scientific reasons: a portion of the quadrant from Dunkirk to Barcelona (about 1000 km, or one-tenth of the total) could be surveyed with start- and end-points at sea level, and that portion was roughly in the middle of the quadrant, where the effects of the Earth's oblateness were expected not to have to be accounted for. Improvements in
11284-408: The poor quality of maps at the time may have led them to be unsure of which mountain they were actually on, and to make estimates of their height which owed more to wishful thinking than scientific measurements. Their description of Changabang is so at variance with the mountain itself that their claim was doubted almost immediately, and by 1955 was not taken seriously anymore. The team's ascent over
11408-559: The portion of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator it represented. Pierre Méchain's and Jean-Baptiste Delambre's measurements were combined with the results of the Spanish-French geodetic mission and a value of 1 / 334 was found for the Earth's flattening. However, French astronomers knew from earlier estimates of the Earth's flattening that different meridian arcs could have different lengths and that their curvature could be irregular. The distance from
11532-490: The range were surveyors of the Great Trigonometric Survey (GTS). During the 1850s and 1860s they climbed dozens of peaks of over 6,100 m (20,000 ft ) and several of over 6,400 m (21,000 ft) in order to make observations, and it was during this period that claims to have ascended the highest point yet reached by man began to be made. Most of these early claims have now been rendered invalid by
11656-485: The saddle in between, a total of 27 soldiers made the first ascent of Kabru South (p. 7318) on May 12 and 13. This expedition also accomplished a first ascent of the highest summit of Kabru (p. 7412), which they called Kabru III and at that time was estimated to be 7395 m high. Three members led by Naib Subedar Dan Singh reached the peak on May 12, while a group of four led by Naib Subedar Devi Singh, climbed it on May 13, completing their ascent of all three summits. In 2004,
11780-401: The same length, confirming an hypothesis of Jean Le Rond d'Alembert . He also proposed an ellipsoid with three unequal axes. In 1860, Elie Ritter, a mathematician from Geneva , using Schubert's data computed that the Earth ellipsoid could rather be a spheroid of revolution accordingly to Adrien-Marie Legendre 's model. However, the following year, resuming his calculation on the basis of all
11904-428: The same route and went even higher—turning around at about 27,300 ft (8,321 m) when Bruce's oxygen apparatus failed. In 1924 the British made another attempt on Everest , and the world altitude record was again broken. On 4 June, Edward Norton, without supplemental oxygen, reached a point on the mountain's Great Couloir 8,572.8 m (28,126 ft) high, his companion Howard Somervell having turned around
12028-458: The scientific means necessary to redefine the units of the metric system according to the progress of sciences. The Metre Convention ( Convention du Mètre ) of 1875 mandated the establishment of a permanent International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM: Bureau International des Poids et Mesures ) to be located in Sèvres , France. This new organisation was to construct and preserve
12152-658: The second General Conference of the International Association of Geodesy held in Berlin, the question of an international standard unit of length was discussed in order to combine the measurements made in different countries to determine the size and shape of the Earth. According to a preliminary proposal made in Neuchâtel the precedent year, the General Conference recommended the adoption of
12276-411: The size of the metre significantly – today Earth's polar circumference measures 40 007 .863 km , a change of about 200 parts per million from the original value of exactly 40 000 km , which also includes improvements in the accuracy of measuring the circumference. Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations, the exceptions being
12400-433: The standard both for the unit of length and for the second. These two quantities could then be used to define the unit of mass. About the unit of length he wrote: In the present state of science the most universal standard of length which we could assume would be the wave length in vacuum of a particular kind of light, emitted by some widely diffused substance such as sodium, which has well-defined lines in its spectrum. Such
12524-528: The structure of space. Einstein's theory of gravity states, on the contrary, that the mass of a body has an effect on all other bodies while modifying the structure of space. A massive body induces a curvature of the space around it in which the path of light is inflected, as was demonstrated by the displacement of the position of a star observed near the Sun during an eclipse in 1919. In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell suggested that light emitted by an element be used as
12648-448: The study of variations in gravitational acceleration was a way to determine the figure of the Earth , whose crucial parameter was the flattening of the Earth ellipsoid . In the 18th century, in addition of its significance for cartography , geodesy grew in importance as a means of empirically demonstrating the theory of gravity , which Émilie du Châtelet promoted in France in combination with Leibniz's mathematical work and because
12772-612: The summit of the 7,134 m (23,406 ft) Kaufman Peak in the Pamirs , a mountain up to that year thought to be the highest mountain in the Soviet Union . After the expedition, it was renamed Lenin Peak . The next advance was a by-product of the international expedition to Kanchenjunga led by Günter Dyhrenfurth in 1930. The attempt on Kanchenjunga itself was abandoned after an avalanche had killed Chettan Sherpa, but members of
12896-456: The task to carry out the experiments necessary for determining the expansion coefficients of the two platinum and brass bars, and to compare the Egyptian standard with a known standard. The Spanish standard designed by Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero and Frutos Saavedra Meneses was chosen for this purpose, as it had served as a model for the construction of the Egyptian standard. In addition,
13020-459: The team stayed to climb a number of smaller peaks in the area. Erwin Schneider [ de ] , who had barely escaped the avalanche, broke his own summit record twice in two weeks: on 24 May he solo-climbed 7,177 m (23,547 ft) Nepal Peak near Kirat Chuli , and on 3 June Hermann Hoerlin [ de ] and he climbed 7,462 m (24,482 ft) Jongsong Peak , planting
13144-470: The term metro cattolico meaning universal measure for this unit of length, but then it was discovered that the length of a seconds pendulum varies from place to place. Christiaan Huygens found out the centrifugal force which explained variations of gravitational acceleration depending on latitude. He also mathematically formulated the link between the length of the simple pendulum and gravitational acceleration. According to Alexis Clairaut ,
13268-439: The theoretical definition of the metre had been inaccessible and misleading at the time of Delambre and Mechain arc measurement, as the geoid is a ball, which on the whole can be assimilated to an oblate spheroid , but which in detail differs from it so as to prohibit any generalization and any extrapolation from the measurement of a single meridian arc. In 1859, Friedrich von Schubert demonstrated that several meridians had not
13392-516: The time. The world altitude record was not broken again until the British expeditions to Mount Everest , and would then become the exclusive preserve of climbers on the world's highest mountain. On the 1922 expedition the record was broken twice. On 21 May, George Mallory , Howard Somervell and Edward Norton reached 26,985 ft (8,225 m) on the mountain's North Ridge, without using supplemental oxygen. Three days later George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce , using supplemental oxygen, followed
13516-437: The uncertainties in characterising the medium are dominated by errors in measuring temperature and pressure. Errors in the theoretical formulas used are secondary. By implementing a refractive index correction such as this, an approximate realisation of the metre can be implemented in air, for example, using the formulation of the metre as 1 579 800 .762 042 (33) wavelengths of helium–neon laser light in vacuum, and converting
13640-574: The uncertainty involved in the direct comparison of wavelengths, because interferometer errors were eliminated. To further facilitate reproducibility from lab to lab, the 17th CGPM also made the iodine-stabilised helium–neon laser "a recommended radiation" for realising the metre. For the purpose of delineating the metre, the BIPM currently considers the HeNe laser wavelength, λ HeNe , to be 632.991 212 58 nm with an estimated relative standard uncertainty ( U ) of 2.1 × 10 . This uncertainty
13764-436: The wavelengths in vacuum to wavelengths in air. Air is only one possible medium to use in a realisation of the metre, and any partial vacuum can be used, or some inert atmosphere like helium gas, provided the appropriate corrections for refractive index are implemented. The metre is defined as the path length travelled by light in a given time, and practical laboratory length measurements in metres are determined by counting
13888-458: The word metre (for the French unit mètre ) in English began at least as early as 1797. Galileo discovered gravitational acceleration to explain the fall of bodies at the surface of the Earth. He also observed the regularity of the period of swing of the pendulum and that this period depended on the length of the pendulum. Kepler's laws of planetary motion served both to the discovery of Newton's law of universal gravitation and to
14012-456: Was a remarkable achievement for its time, breaking the existing altitude record by at least 360 m (assuming a pre-Columbian ascent of Aconcagua ) and holding on to it for twenty-six years (when in 1909 an expedition led by Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi reached about 7500 m on Chogolisa ). The same peak nevertheless became the site of an undisputed altitude record on 20 October 1907, when
14136-507: Was achieved in 1909 by the Duke of the Abruzzi's expedition to the Karakoram. After failing to make progress on K2 the Duke led an attempt on Chogolisa , where they reached a height of approximately 7,500 m (24,600 ft) before turning around just 150 m below the summit due to bad weather and the risk of falling through a cornice in poor visibility. The undisputed summit record, though not
14260-453: Was climbed the following year. On 26 May, three days before the successful attempt, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans reached the South Summit before turning back due to malfunctioning oxygen apparatus. Their height of 8,760 m (28,750 ft) represented a new, short lived, altitude record, and can be seen as a summit record if this is taken to include minor tops as well as genuine mountains. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally reached
14384-520: Was determined astronomically. Bayer proposed to remeasure ten arcs of meridians and a larger number of arcs of parallels, to compare the curvature of the meridian arcs on the two slopes of the Alps , in order to determine the influence of this mountain range on vertical deflection . Baeyer also planned to determine the curvature of the seas, the Mediterranean Sea and Adriatic Sea in the south,
14508-486: Was later explained by clearance in the central axis of the repeating circle causing wear and consequently the zenith measurements contained significant systematic errors. Polar motion predicted by Leonhard Euler and later discovered by Seth Carlo Chandler also had an impact on accuracy of latitudes' determinations. Among all these sources of error, it was mainly an unfavourable vertical deflection that gave an inaccurate determination of Barcelona's latitude and
14632-755: Was mitigated by that of neutral states. While the German astronomer Wilhelm Julius Foerster , director of the Berlin Observatory and director of the German Weights and Measures Service boycotted the Permanent Committee of the International Metre Commission, along with the Russian and Austrian representatives, in order to promote the foundation of a permanent International Bureau of Weights and Measures ,
14756-471: Was necessary to carefully study considerable areas of land in all directions. Baeyer developed a plan to coordinate geodetic surveys in the space between the parallels of Palermo and Freetown Christiana ( Denmark ) and the meridians of Bonn and Trunz (German name for Milejewo in Poland ). This territory was covered by a triangle network and included more than thirty observatories or stations whose position
14880-469: Was no advance on Norton's record. While there would be no advance on the altitude record until the 1950s, the summit record was broken five times in the inter-war years. The first was by just another 6 meters, when on 15 September 1928 the German mountaineers Karl Wien and Eugen Allwein [ de ] and the Austrian mountaineer and cartographer Erwin Schneider [ de ] reached
15004-461: Was not until the 20th century that mountaineers in the Himalaya exceeded the heights which had been reached in the Andes . The altitude and summit records rose steadily during the early 20th century until 1953, when the ascent of Mount Everest made the concept obsolete. European exploration of the Himalaya began in earnest during the mid-19th century, and the earliest people known to have climbed in
15128-457: Was particularly worrying, because when the primary Imperial yard standard had partially been destroyed in 1834, a new standard of reference was constructed using copies of the "Standard Yard, 1760", instead of the pendulum's length as provided for in the Weights and Measures Act of 1824, because the pendulum method proved unreliable. Nevertheless Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler 's use of the metre and
15252-467: Was the first to tie experimentally the metre to the wave length of a spectral line. According to him the standard length might be compared with that of a wave of light identified by a line in the solar spectrum . Albert Michelson soon took up the idea and improved it. In 1893, the standard metre was first measured with an interferometer by Albert A. Michelson , the inventor of the device and an advocate of using some particular wavelength of light as
15376-441: Was ultimately decided that the metre would be based on the Earth quadrant (a quarter of the Earth's circumference through its poles), Talleyrand proposed that the metre be the length of the seconds pendulum at a latitude of 45°. This option, with one-third of this length defining the foot , was also considered by Thomas Jefferson and others for redefining the yard in the United States shortly after gaining independence from
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