ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Great Trigonometrical Survey

The Great Trigonometrical Survey is a really cool thing that happened a long time ago. It was a project that involved measuring all the way across India to figure out how big and how far away everything was.

Imagine you have a really big map of India. You want to know how tall the mountains are, how far apart the cities are, and how long the rivers are. But you can't just look at the map and figure it out. You need to go there and measure everything with special tools.

That's what the people who did the Great Trigonometrical Survey did. They traveled all over India with lots of equipment like telescopes, compasses, and sextants, which helped them measure very precisely. They even had to climb up to the tops of mountains to measure them!

They used something called trigonometry, which is a way of using math to figure out distances and angles. They started at one point and measured to another point, then to another, and so on. They kept doing this over and over until they covered most of India.

It took a really long time, over 60 years, to finish the survey. But it was worth it because they made really accurate maps and learned a lot about India's geography. And all this information was used to build roads, railways, canals, and other important things that helped India develop as a country.