Surveying the world

Almost nowhere do numbers play such a significant role as when used to survey the world we live in. Ever since man began to explore nature from a scientific perspective, numbers have been used to capture the details of the cosmos and our planet. Carl Friedrich Gauss estimated that he wrote down over a million numbers in the course of surveying the Kingdom of Hanover.
 
The exhibition features instruments used to explore the stars, such as an astrolabe, as well as land survey tools and results in the form of globes, atlases and the like. The significance of numbers in sea and weather charts is particularly striking. Visitors can use an interactive number telescope for land surveying purposes and measure distances in the exhibition along a number line.