Given that some people claim the curvature of the Earth is not accounted for in surveying, I thought it would be interesting to document various historical instances of this, and of accounting for refraction.
Curvature comes up in two ways. Firstly it arises when determining latitude and longitude by observation of sun and stars. The Earth here is assumed to be a sphere, and the stars essentially fixed in a “celestial sphere” infinitely far away.
Secondly it comes up in the practice of levelling which is the art of determining how high things are above a nominal level surface ... Read even more
