Historical anecdotes

Aarau: a city which, given the prominent role it played in the development of Switzerland’s modern national topographical surveys at the turn of the 19th century, could also be called the “capital of Swiss surveying”.

The magnificent cultural and historic achievement of the Dufour map is due among other things to the fact that this work was created against the background of an as yet ununited nation. Dufour therefore had to rely on a major collaborative effort of experts from the individual cantons.

From 4 to 9 June 1832, Ludwig Wurstemberger summoned five experts to Bern to take part in the first meeting of the Commission for Topographic Surveys. Among the issues discussed at the meeting, it was decided that Antoine-Josef Buchwalder should link up the existing triangulation network to the Austrian triangulation system. To do this, Buchwalder and his assistant Gobat had to climb the Säntis to measure the necessary angles.

Why is it that 1838 is regarded as the founding year for one of the oldest elements in what was to become the Swiss government – a full decade before 1848?

The Federal Office of Topography, founded in Geneva in 1838 by Guillaume-Henri Dufour as the Federal Topographical Bureau, is one of the oldest parts of the Swiss Federal Administration. The Dufour Map, a 1:100,000 topographic map of Switzerland and the first official nationwide map series, was published in 1845. The lease on the bureau’s premises in Geneva expired at the end of May 1865, after which a move to Bern was planned. Relocating to the Swiss capital marked the beginning of the Office’s nomadic existence, which was to last until 1941.

The iron surveying pyramid on the Chasseral underlines the importance of the prominent Jura peak for the national survey even today. Although situated at the highest point of the Bernese Jura, the pyramid has spent a humble existence in close proximity to the bulky transmitter since 1979. It is less well known that the marker on the Chasseral has symbolic significance in how “Niveau”, in the sense of topographic level, arrived in Switzerland The German word “Niveau” is primarily used in connection with “education” or “rank”. However, in the context of the 175th anniversary, questions about the “Niveau” of Switzerland may quite rightly be asked, since the expression is also a synonym for “altitude”.

The "fantastic 1860s" were an important time for the surveying of Switzerland: in 1861 the Swiss Geodetic Commission (SGC) was established.

This centre point is a symbol of the technological development which swisstopo has been involved in since its 150th anniversary in 1988. At that time the “geographic centre of Switzerland” was marked with a triangulation point on Alp Älggi to the south of Sachseln. The calculation was based on the national borders, which had then just been digitised for the first time and were one of the first data sets which hinted at the possibility that, in the digital age to come, the organisation would be using geodata as well as maps.

The “Golden 1920s” was a great time for topographers too, as the engineers began, literally, to take off.

The Swiss Geological Survey is the latest department to join the Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo).

Whenever we go hiking we almost always find that our route lies on more than one map. It’s like dropping buttered toast – it almost always lands on the buttered side!. This is why we conceived the idea of visiting the four corners of the Filisur national map sheet (sheet 1216).