It was named after Sir George Everest, who was the head of the survey and map-making organization Survey of India from to Sir George Everest died on this day in He was the director of Survey of India at the time, so this credit was taken away from Radhanath Sikdar and given to Andrew Waugh. This agency was established to create an official map of India. Computers were not invented at that time. All calculations were done by humans and such people were called 'Computer' in the Survey of India.
The team of Survey of India reached close to the Himalayan range in the s. At that time, the peak of Kangchenjunga mountain was considered to be the highest mountain peak in the world. In the year , Radhanath Sikdar started the work of measuring the mountain peak named 'Peak 15'.
At that time, Mount Everest was known by this name. With the help of a special device, Radhanath Sikdar recorded the height of 'Peak 15' at meters. Scott had worked with Sir George Everest, former director of Survey of India and considered him his mentor. This means that the credit for measuring the official height of Mount Everest was taken away from Radhanath Sikdar and the highest mountain peak in the world was named after an Englishman.
The British government tried its best to hide this information. Andrew Scott Waugh, a British army officer, surveyor and the one who named Mt.
Everest, argued that there was no commonly used local name of the mountain. Baburam Acharya, a prominent Nepali historian, published his article in , for the first time pointing out that the region has always called this peak "Sagarm".
Everest Base Camp. Everest by Qinghai-Tibet Train. Mount Everest. The snow and ice on the mountain create deadly hazards like avalanches, and there is only a limited climbing season due to bad weather conditions. But perhaps the biggest danger is the altitude. Most climbers are not accustomed to the high altitude and low oxygen levels and rely on bottled oxygen they bring along.
With more people has also come more pollution up near the summit as climbers often discard unwanted items all along the mountain. Additionally, the Sherpa people have been exploited by climbers, and their traditional way of life has been disrupted by foreign climbers. Sherpa guides are faced with some of the highest death rates of any field of employment, for comparatively little pay. Most disturbingly, because many climbers have died along the way, and their bodies are impossible to retrieve, climbers must frequently travel past corpses as they make their way up the mountain.
Mount Everest is part of the Himalaya and straddles the border of Nepal and China. Sherpa often serve as mountaineer guides and porters on mountain-climbing expeditions.
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However, there was one person who did not agree that the highest mountain on Earth should bear this name, none other than British surveyor and geographer Sir George Everest, precisely the man whose name was chosen to designate the roof of the world. Although in the golden age of exploration it was common for explorers to leave their own names in some of the places they visited, this is not one of those cases; in fact, George Everest July 4, — December 1, never got to see with his own eyes the mountain that would bear his name.
Although he certainly did not lack the merit to leave his mark on the history of geography, his was not the romantic story of the explorer, but the more technical and quiet tale of the surveyor. Born into a family well-established in the London borough of Greenwich, Everest moved away from his roots at the age of 16 to pursue his military career in India.
His flair for mathematics and astronomy soon led him to assume surveying roles, until in he was called upon as a principal assistant by William Lambton, director of the Great Trigonometric Survey Project.
From this initiative was aimed at carrying out an accurate measurement of the entire Indian subcontinent, and Everest was assigned a tedious task: to continue the measurement of a meridian arc from the southern tip of the peninsula to Nepal, along some 2, kilometres. Perhaps the best-known aspect of his years of fieldwork were the multiple illnesses that he contracted. Despite his more than delicate health, Everest was an indefatigable and conscientious worker, which opened the doors of several scientific institutions, including the prestigious Royal Society.
After his retirement and his return to England, his position in India was occupied by his pupil, Andrew Scott Waugh , who in had completed the measurement of the meridian in the north and laid eyes on what was then one of the snowy peaks of the Himalayas.
Waugh took a few years to confirm the calculations, and in he announced his results to the Royal Geographical Society , proposing for the highest of the terrestrial peaks the name of his predecessor: Mount Everest. Both Waugh and his mentor used to adopt the local names for the geographical features they described. But in this case the mountain itself was outside the limits of British rule, and the villages to the south, Waugh argued, did not refer to that summit by a single name.
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