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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

The Paris coordinate reference system, geometrically surveyed by the citizen Verniquet

Résumé

On Vendémiaire 25, year 4 of the Republic, the mathematicians, astronomers and members of the Académie des Sciences Jérôme de Lalande and Sylvestre François Lacroix sanctioned the "most accurate and perfect large-scale map of Paris of its kind ever executed". They were referring to the great 1:1728 topographical map of Paris, designed, surveyed and drawn under the supervision of Edme Verniquet since 1784, which was then in the process of being engraved. A masterpiece of 18th-century mathematical science and surveying techniques, comparable to the Cassini map on a city scale, the “Verniquet map” has been preserved in the form of a printed atlas, supplemented by a considerable number of sketch maps and a manuscript volume documenting the surveying operations for the map's trigonometric canvas. This atlas des opérations trigonométriques is truly a unique insight into the real-life conditions under which mathematical and topometric knowledge was put to the test on the eve of the French Revolution. Leveraged by historian Jeanne Pronteau from a historiographical point of view, the “atlas of trigonometric operations” is a powerful critical tool for a major map in the history of Parisian cartography. An in-depth exploration, in the light of modern surveying techniques, helps us to understand and retrace the strategies used by 18th-century cartographers to detect and compensate for measurement and calculation errors. We also present a renewed "geometric" analysis of Verniquet's map, based on a twofold quantitative assessment. The first is an intrinsic assessment of the uncertainties of general triangulation and ground-level survey operations. The second explores the absolute planimetric accuracy of the positions of a set of elevated points in Paris, from which Verniquet and his cartographers constructed the canvas of their map of the city.

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Dates et versions

hal-04679476 , version 1 (27-08-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04679476 , version 1

Citer

Bertrand Duménieu, Nathalie Abadie, Stéphane Baciocchi, Pascal Cristofoli, Julien Chadeyron, et al.. The Paris coordinate reference system, geometrically surveyed by the citizen Verniquet. International Conference on the History of Cartography, Imago Mundi; University of Lyon, Jul 2024, Lyon, France. ⟨hal-04679476⟩
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