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A direct readout theodolite, manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1958 and used for topographic surveying

A theodolite /θiːˈɒdəlaɪt/ is a precision optical instrument for measuring angles between designated visible points in the horizontal and vertical planes. The traditional use has been for land surveying, but they are also used extensively for building and infrastructure construction, and some specialized applications such as meteorology and rocket launching.^[1]

It consists of a moveable telescope mounted so it can rotate around horizontal and vertical axes and provide angular readouts. These indicate the orientation of the telescope, and are used to relate the first point sighted through the telescope to subsequent sightings of other points from the same theodolite position. These angles can be measured with great accuracy, typically to milliradian or seconds of arc. From these readings a plan can be drawn, or objects can be positioned in accordance with an existing plan. The modern theodolite has evolved into what is known as a total station where angles and distances are measured electronically, and are read directly to computer memory.

In a transit theodolite, the telescope is short enough to rotate through the zenith, otherwise for non-transit instruments vertical (or altitude), rotation is restricted to a limited arc.

The optical level is sometimes mistaken for a theodolite, but it does not measure vertical angles, and is used only for levelling on a horizontal plane.

Principles of operation

The axes and circles of a theodolite

Diagram of an optical readout theodolite

Preparation for making sightings

Temporary adjustments are a set of operations necessary in order to make a theodolite ready for taking observations at a station. These include its setting up, centering, leveling up and elimination of parallax, and are achieved in four steps:

• Setting up - fixing the theodolite onto a tripod along with approximate levelling and centering over the station mark.


• Centering - bringing the vertical axis of theodolite immediately over station mark using a centering plate also known as a tribrach.


• Levelling - leveling of the base of the instrument to make the vertical axis vertical usually with an in-built bubble-level.


• Focusing - removing parallax error by proper focusing of objective and eye-piece. The eye-piece only requires adjustment once at a station. The objective will be re-focused for each subsequent sightings from this station because of the different distances to the target.

Sightings

Sightings are taken by the surveyor, who adjusts the telescope's vertical and horizontal angular orientation so the cross-hairs align with the desired sighting point. Both angles are read either from exposed or internal scales and recorded. The next object is then sighted and recorded without moving the position of the instrument and tripod.

The earliest angular readouts were from open vernier scales directly visible to the eye. Gradually these scales were enclosed for physical protection, and finally became an indirect optical readout, with convoluted light paths to bring them to a convenient place on the instrument for viewing. The modern digital theodolites have electronic displays.

Errors in measurement

Index error - The angles in the vertical axis should read 90° (100 grad) when the sight axis is horizontal, or 270° (300 grad) when the instrument is transited. Half of the difference between the two positions is called the "index error". This can only be checked on transit instruments.

Horizontal axis error - The horizontal and vertical axes of a theodolite must be perpendicular; if not then a "horizontal axis error" exists. This can be tested by aligning the tubular spirit bubble parallel to a line between two footscrews and setting the bubble central. A horizontal axis error is present if the bubble runs off central when the tubular spirit bubble is reversed (turned through 180°). To adjust, the operator removes 1/2 the amount the bubble has run off using the adjusting screw, then re-level, test and refine the adjustment.

Collimation error - The optical axis of the telescope, must also be perpendicular to the horizontal axis. If not, then a "collimation error" exists.

Index error, horizontal-axis error ('trunnion-axis error') and collimation error are regularly determined by calibration and are removed by mechanical adjustment. Their existence is taken into account in the choice of measurement procedure in order to eliminate their effect on the measurement results of the theodolite.

History

A theodolite of 1851, showing the open construction, and the altitude and azimuth scales which are read directly.

Sectioned theodolite showing the complex light paths for optical readout, and the enclosed construction.

The term diopter was sometimes used in old texts as a synonym for theodolite.^[2] This derives from an older astronomical instrument called a dioptra.

Prior to the theodolite, instruments such as the groma, geometric square and various other graduated circles (see circumferentor) and semicircles (see graphometer) were used to obtain either vertical or horizontal angle measurements. It was only a matter of time before someone put two measuring devices into a single instrument that could measure both angles simultaneously. Gregorius Reisch showed such an instrument in the appendix of his book Margarita Philosophica, which he published in Strasburg in 1512.^[3] It was described in the appendix by Martin Waldseemüller, a German topographer and cartographer, who made the device in the same year.^[4] Waldseemüller called his instrument the polimetrum.^[5]

The first occurrence of the word "theodolite" is found in the surveying textbook A geometric practice named Pantometria (1571) by Leonard Digges, which was published posthumously by his son, Thomas Digges.^[3] The etymology of the word is unknown. The first part of the New Latin theo-delitus might stem from the Greek θεᾶσθαι, "to behold or look attentively upon"^[6] or θεῖν "to run",^[7] but the second part is more puzzling and is often attributed to an unscholarly variation of one of the following Greek words: δῆλος, meaning "evident" or "clear",^[8][9] or δολιχός "long", or δοῦλος "slave", or an unattested Neolatin compound combining ὁδός "way" and λιτός "plain".^[7] It has been also suggested that -delitus is a variation of the Latin supine deletus, in the sense of "crossed out".^[7] Another theory is that it may be derived from the Arabic "alidhada" prefixed by the English "the".^[10]

There is some confusion about the instrument to which the name was originally applied. Some identify the early theodolite as an azimuth instrument only, while others specify it as an altazimuth instrument. In Digges's book, the name "theodolite" described an instrument for measuring horizontal angles only. He also described an instrument that measured both altitude and azimuth, which he called a topographicall instrument [sic].^[11] Thus the name originally applied only to the azimuth instrument and only later became associated with the altazimuth instrument. The 1728 Cyclopaedia compares "graphometer" to "half-theodolite".^[12] Even as late as the 19th century, the instrument for measuring horizontal angles only was called a simple theodolite and the altazimuth instrument, the plain theodolite.^[13]

The first instrument more like a true theodolite was likely the one built by Joshua Habermel (Erasmus Habermehl) in Germany in 1576, complete with compass and tripod.^[4]

The earliest altazimuth instruments consisted of a base graduated with a full circle at the limb and a vertical angle measuring device, most often a semicircle. An alidade on the base was used to sight an object for horizontal angle measurement, and a second alidade was mounted on the vertical semicircle. Later instruments had a single alidade on the vertical semicircle and the entire semicircle was mounted so as to be used to indicate horizontal angles directly. Eventually, the simple, open-sight alidade was replaced with a sighting telescope. This was first done by Jonathan Sisson in 1725.^[13]

The theodolite became a modern, accurate instrument in 1787, with the introduction of Jesse Ramsden's famous great theodolite, which he created using a very accurate dividing engine of his own design.^[13] The demand could not be met by foreign theodolites owing to their inadequate precision, hence all instruments meeting high precision requirements were made in England. Despite the many German instrument builders at the turn of the century, there were no usable German theodolites available. A transition was brought about by Breithaupt and the symbiosis of Utzschneider, Reichenbach and Fraunhofer.^[14]
As technology progressed, in the 1840s, the vertical partial circle was replaced with a full circle, and both vertical and horizontal circles were finely graduated. This was the transit theodolite. Theodolites were later adapted to a wider variety of mountings and uses. In the 1870s, an interesting waterborne version of the theodolite (using a pendulum device to counteract wave movement) was invented by Edward Samuel Ritchie.^[15] It was used by the U.S. Navy to take the first precision surveys of American harbors on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.^[16]

In the early part of the 20th century, Heinrich Wild produced theodolites that became popular with surveyors. His Wild T2, T3, and A1 instruments were made for many years, and he would go on to develop the DK1, DKM1, DM2, DKM2, and DKM3 for Kern Aarau company. With continuing refinements, instruments steadily evolved into the modern theodolite used by surveyors today.

Operation in surveying

U.S. National Geodetic Survey technicians observing with a 0.2 arcsecond (≈ 0.001 mrad or 1 µrad) resolution Wild T3 theodolite mounted on an observing stand. Photo was taken during an Arctic field party (c. 1950).

Triangulation, as invented by Gemma Frisius around 1533, consists of making such direction plots of the surrounding landscape from two separate standpoints. The two graphing papers are superimposed, providing a scale model of the landscape, or rather the targets in it. The true scale can be obtained by measuring one distance both in the real terrain and in the graphical representation.

Modern triangulation as, e.g., practised by Snellius, is the same procedure executed by numerical means. Photogrammetric block adjustment of stereo pairs of aerial photographs is a modern, three-dimensional variant.

In the late 1780s, Jesse Ramsden, a Yorkshireman from Halifax, England who had developed the dividing engine for dividing angular scales accurately to within a second of arc (≈ 0.0048 mrad or 4.8 µrad), was commissioned to build a new instrument for the British Ordnance Survey. The Ramsden theodolite was used over the next few years to map the whole of southern Britain by triangulation.

In network measurement, the use of forced centering speeds up operations while maintaining the highest precision. The theodolite or the target can be rapidly removed from, or socketed into, the forced centering plate with sub-millimeter precision. Nowadays GPS antennas used for geodetic positioning use a similar mounting system. The height of the reference point of the theodolite—or the target—above the ground benchmark must be measured precisely.

Transit theodolite

The term transit theodolite, or transit for short, refers to a type of theodolite that was developed in the early 19th century. It was popular with American railroad engineers pushing west, and it replaced the railroad compass, sextant and octant. It features a vertical circle which is graduated through the full 360 degrees and a telescope that could "flip over" ("transit the scope"). By reversing the telescope and at the same time rotating the instrument through 180 degrees about the vertical axis, the instrument can be used in 'plate-left' or 'plate-right' modes ('plate' refers to the vertical protractor circle). By measuring the same horizontal and vertical angles in these two modes and then averaging the results, centering and collimating errors in the instrument can be eliminated. Some transit instruments are capable of reading angles directly to thirty arc-seconds (≈ 0.15 mrad). Modern theodolites are usually of the transit-theodolite design, but engraved plates have been replaced with glass plates designed to be read with light-emitting diodes and computer circuitry, greatly improving accuracy.

Use with weather balloons

There is a long history of theodolite use in measuring winds aloft, by using specially-manufactured theodolites to track the horizontal and vertical angles of special weather balloons called ceiling balloons or pilot balloons (pibal). Early attempts at this were made in the opening years of the nineteenth century, but the instruments and procedures weren't fully developed until a hundred years later. This method was extensively used in World War II and thereafter, and was gradually replaced by radio and GPS measuring systems from the 1980s onward.

The pibal theodolite uses a prism to bend the optical path by 90 degrees so the operator's eye position does not change as the elevation is changed through a complete 180 degrees. The theodolite is typically mounted on a rugged steel stand, set up so it is level and pointed north, with the altitude and azimuth scales reading zero degrees. A balloon is released in front of the theodolite, and its position is precisely tracked, usually once a minute. The balloons are carefully constructed and filled, so their rate of ascent can be known fairly accurately in advance. Mathematical calculations on time, rate of ascent, azimuth and angular altitude can produce good estimates of wind speed and direction at various altitudes.^[17]

Modern electronic theodolites

A typical modern electronic theodolite: Nikon DTM-520

In modern electronic theodolites, the readout of the horizontal and vertical circles is usually done with a rotary encoder. These produce signals indicating the altitude and azimuth of the telescope which are fed to a microprocessor. CCD sensors have been added to the focal plane of the telescope allowing both auto-targeting and the automated measurement of residual target offset. All this is implemented in embedded software of the processor.

Many modern theodolites are equipped with integrated electro-optical distance measuring devices, generally infrared based, allowing the measurement in one step of complete three-dimensional vectors—albeit in instrument-defined polar co-ordinates, which can then be transformed to a pre-existing co-ordinate system in the area by means of a sufficient number of control points. This technique is called a resection solution or free station position surveying and is widely used in mapping surveying.

Such instruments are "intelligent" theodolites called self-registering tacheometers or colloquially "total stations", and perform all the necessary angular and distance calculations, and the results or raw data can be downloaded to external processors, such as ruggedized laptops, PDAs or programmable calculators^[18]

Gyrotheodolites

A gyrotheodolite is used when the north-south reference bearing of the meridian is required in the absence of astronomical star sights. This occurs mainly in the underground mining industry and in tunnel engineering. For example, where a conduit must pass under a river, a vertical shaft on each side of the river might be connected by a horizontal tunnel. A gyrotheodolite can be operated at the surface and then again at the foot of the shafts to identify the directions needed to tunnel between the base of the two shafts. Unlike an artificial horizon or inertial navigation system, a gyrotheodolite cannot be relocated while it is operating. It must be restarted again at each site.

The gyrotheodolite comprises a normal theodolite with an attachment that contains a gyroscope mounted so as to sense rotation of the Earth and from that the alignment of the meridian. The meridian is the plane that contains both the axis of the Earth's rotation and the observer. The intersection of the meridian plane with the horizontal contains the true north-south geographic reference bearing required. The gyrotheodolite is usually referred to as being able to determine or find true north.

A gyrotheodolite will function at the equator and in both the northern and southern hemispheres. The meridian is undefined at the geographic poles. A gyrotheodolite cannot be used at the poles where the Earth's axis is precisely perpendicular to the horizontal axis of the spinner, indeed it is not normally used within about 15 degrees of the pole because the east-west component of the Earth's rotation is insufficient to obtain reliable results. When available, astronomical star sights are able to give the meridian bearing to better than one hundred times the accuracy of the gyrotheodolite. Where this extra precision is not required, the gyrotheodolite is able to produce a result quickly without the need for night observations.

See also

• Cinetheodolite


• Dumpy level


• Inclinometer


• LIDAR


• Macrometer


• Plane table


• Rankine's method


• Survey camp


• Temporary adjustments of theodolite

Manufacturers

• Leica Geosystems


• Sokkia


• Topcon


• Trimble (company)

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Theodolites.