Photography measures the landscape
Photogrammetry is the practice of taking measurements through the medium of photography, enabling an object to be fully reconstructed by comparing different views. In 1851, French colonel Aime Laussedat created the first photographic body designed for measuring, and in this way, he may be regarded as the father of photogrammetry.
The first geometric representation of Swiss territory is the work of the future General Dufour, who from 1832 worked with his assistants on carrying out a relief map of the whole of Switzerland using the principle of triangulation. In 1845 they published the first of the 25 pages which made up the 1:100 000 scale national map. Publication was completed in 1864.
In 1878, the Federal Topographical Office carried out its first photogrammetric terrestrial relief map of the Rhone glacier. Round about 1890, German teacher Carl Koppe, who had already been carrying out triangulation work on the St. Gottard railway, made a series of relief maps within the framework of a construction survey for the Jungfrau railway. He was equipped with a phototheodolite similar to the one shown here.