PRIME MISURE GEODETICHE E GRAVIMETRICHE NEL ‘700 E ‘800

Abstract

At the beginning of the 19^th century, the Observatory of Brera in Milan and the Observatories of Vienna and Prague were the three most important astronomic institutions of the Austrian empire. In the same period, in Milan, an experiment, concerning the measurement of the gravimetric perturbations on the simple pendulum movement, was prepared to evaluate the density of the earth. Indeed until that epoch, few researches in this field were performed only in England. Unfortunately after the positive conclusion of this first experiment, difficult political conditions caused the stop of the cooperation among European institutions and blocked also a possible continuation of these experiments at a European scale. In Italy, gravimetric surveying restarted al the end of the 19^th century and it continued until the ‘60s of the 20^th century. In the previous context (August 1825), a relevant step was the application, for the data treat-ment, of the least squares method, just four years after its issue in 1821.