Ludwig Greiner - Triangulation of Gerlachovský Peak

Triangulation of Gerlachovský Peak

Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg's estates were distributed over areas in present-day Slovakia and Hungary. The estate managed from Hrabušice was in the vicinity of the Tatra Mountains, a craggy section of the Carpathians. According to Greiner's own account, he climbed Lomnický Peak on 10 August 1837, a beautiful sunny day, measured its elevation with an altimeter and used the quadrant to determine that Gerlachovský Peak was actually higher. It was unexpected, because the previous, generally accepted measurement by the Swedish botanist Göran Wahlenberg from 1813 recorded Gerlachovský Peak's elevation as 285 m (935 ft) lower. Greiner was convinced that his own observation about Gerlachovský Peak's relative height was right, but because he considered the altimeter and quadrant insufficiently precise instruments, he triangulated the elevations of several of the Tatra peaks from the vicinity of the town of Poprad, not far from Hrabušice, in the fall of 1838 after he obtained a very accurate theodolite from a friend. Greiner's paper published the next year dethroned the mountains of Kriváň and Lomnický Peak, which had been alternately considered the highest peaks until then, and reported that the highest point in the Tatras and the whole Carpathian chain was Gerlachovský Peak. The elevation Greiner calculated was off by only 13 meters (43 ft) by comparison to what it is known to be today.