The Surveying gallery is the place to find a solid technical history of mapping, showing all the major developments up to the satellite age.
From local maps to ordnance surveys to holistic views of the Earth, the gallery shows the complete range. The earlier instruments are works of art as well as scientific instruments, and contrast with the more recent utility-based material.
The centrepiece of the gallery is the two-foot theodolite, first used in Ireland from 1828 and then employed on the ordnance survey of Great Britain until the 1860s. It’s a remarkable piece of workmanship by Troughton and Simms, leading instrument-makers of the time.
At the other end of the scale the gallery contains simple pedometers and waywisers, levels, theodolites, compasses, baseline apparatus and photographic mapping equipment.
Difficulties of the terrain are not forgotten, nor the problems of transport. The need for survey work includes environmental and global monitoring, not merely physical maps, and part of the gallery addresses this subject. There is also a section on charting the sea.
Surveying can be taken for granted in modern life, but is shown here to provide an essential underpinning for the way we live.