The Austro-Hungarian Triangulations in the Balkan Peninsula (1855-1875)

摘要

The Turkish part of the Balkan Peninsula was an area of extensive geodetic surveys between 1854 and 1875. These works were carried out by the Austro-Hungarian authorities, partially in the frame of the International Arc Measurements (International Gradmessung). These activities were made in the present territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro, southern Serbia and Kosovo, Bulgaria, southern Romania, Macedonia and also northern Greece. Astronomical points were measured throughout the area, mainly along travel routes of the surveying parties, and then other points, mainly mountain peaks, were determined by triangulation (intersection) from the astronomical points. No geodetic network adjustment was applied to the point sets. Based on these geodetic base point data, 1:75,000 scale maps of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was issued from the 1880s to WWI, as well as local Serbian maps after the independency of the state. The existing geodetic datasets formed the base of the utilization of the Hermannskogel datum in the later Yugoslavia, even the territories that were not part of the Habsburg Empire. For present GIS applications it should be underlined, that the Yugoslav version of the Hermannskogel datum used a different Ferro-Greenwich longitude shift, thus the datum description parameters differ from the ones used in Austria.