Cloud, John. "Crossing the Olentangy River: The Figure of the Earth and the Military-Industrial-Academic-Complex, 1947-1972". Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Vol.31, No.3 (2000): 371-404.

Cloud, John. "Crossing the Olentangy River: The Figure of the Earth and the Military-Industrial-Academic-Complex, 1947-1972". Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Vol.31, No.3 (2000): 371-404.

• Geodesy, the study of the size and shape of the Earth, is fundamentally a global science that has depended on international cooperation from Carl Gauss's Magnetic Union to the present International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. (372-373).
• Following the conclusion of the Cold War, geodesy has returned to a high level of international collaboration, with the data obtained through CORONA and the equivalent Soviet programs now being shared as part of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame and the International Earth Rotation Service (401).
• Because geodesy is fundamental to the creation of accurate maps and charts, it has always had a relationship to the military. It did not, however, historically a military science (373).
• From the establishment of a geodesy, photogrammetry, and cartography program funded by the Ohio State University Research Foundation in 1947, Ohio State University [OSU] become the global epicenter of research and education on geodesy until the 1970s. These initiatives were almost wholly funded by the Department of Defense (373-374).
• During this period, OSU produced two major classified programs: The CORONA reconnaissance satellite system, developed between 1958 and 1972; and the World Geodetic System, compiled in 1972 (374). As well as a number of other, smaller, projects (381).
• Between 1947 and 1950, the Mapping and Charting Research Laboratory worked with the US Coast and Geodetic Survey on the Southern Arizona Controlled Area project, which resurveyed hundreds of locations across southern Arizona to develop an ideal testing area for reconnaissance and imagery systems, through which errors can easily be detected thanks to knowledge of the exact location of all plotted points (381-382).
• Under Project 307-X, from 1947 to 1959, under the leadership of Russian emigre professor Nicolai Bobrovnikoff, the Research Laboratory was charged with developing an understanding of current Russian geodetic and cartographical knowledge based on captured materials. On 1 March 1948, the project was classified (382).
• Research Laboratory members were sent to make simultaneous observations of a solar eclipse on 8 and 9 September 1948 from different positions on behalf of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Using the rotation of the Earth as a constant, this allowed for a very accurate calculation of distance between the points of observation. This project was repeated during another eclipse in 1954 (382-382).
• From 1947 to 1950, the Research Laboratory ran Operation Plumbob, which sought to use more accurate measurements of altitude to systematically attach photos to locations based on known geodetic points. The project was largely a failure due to the difficulty of determining vertical position based on photographs (383).
• The World Geodetic System was intended to plot the global geoid by determining heights and deflections of the vertical at points across the Earth. It required an immense number of data points (387). Originally planned using gravimetric methods, it was instead accomplished using satellite geodesy (395). It was finally complemented with heavily involvement from the Department of Defense in 1972 (398).
• The geodesy program at OSU ultimately declined in significance because it became too integrated into the rest of OSU academia, fostering a less classified environment than preferred by the military and opening the department up to academic intrigue. The other major reasons it declined was that it was too successful, having accomplished its most significant projects and supplied the information required to aim ICMBs in the 1960s (401-402).
• The earth sciences were taught under the School of Natural History at OSU since its foundation in 1873. By the turn of the 20th Century, the earth sciences were represented in the departments of geology and geography, as well as a program on geometric geodesy and surveying under the department of civil engineering (374).
• In November 1936, the OSU Research Foundation was founded to facilitate research contracted outside the University (374). It originally made contracts with local businesses, such as Proctor and Gamble. In 1940, the government also began issuing contracts and by 1941, these government contracts, including the Manhattan Project, outnumbered civilian contracts at OSU Research Foundation (375).
• By 1937, the Research Foundation was approached by a group of civil engineering professors about establishing an International Institution for the Sciences of Earth Measurement and Representation, Geodesy, Cartography, Photogrammetry, and Electronic Measurement, based on similar institutions in Europe. This initial proposal was rejected (374-375).
• In 1947, a group of earth scientists with experience working with the military during WWII again asked the Research Foundation to advance the work on cartography and geodesy by establishing the Mapping and Charting Research Laboratory. The program was approved, with most funding provided by the US Army Air Force. This Air Force funding was then supplemented by other government contracts (380-381).
• Traditionally, projects undertaken by the Research Foundation were not involved in instruction. However, by 1950 the Mapping and Charting Research Laboratory staff had recognized the need to train new personnel. It asked to be charted directly by OSU as an independent Institute of Geodesy, Photogrammetry, and Cartography. This was authorized on 20 November 1950 (384).
• Unlike other institutes, the Institute of Geodesy, Photogrammetry, and Cartography was not affiliated with any single department, instead operating directly under the Graduate School. This was part of the request, as the George Harding, the Institute's leader, felt that its work crossed the divide between applied and theoretical science, and between science and engineering, and would thus be constrained under any department (384).
• Mr. Harding immediately requested more money, much of which he planned to acquire through industrial and government contracts, to buy more advanced equipment. The Institute consistently received the requested funding and additional laboratory space, sometimes over the objections of other departments (385).
• The establishment of the Institute was partially thanks to Mr. Harding's decision to invite Weikko Heiskanen, head of the International Isostatic Institute and generally considered one of the greatest geodesists of his time, to visit OSU in 1950, later joining OSU faculty. Dr. Heiskanen brought prestige and a compelling project to determine the global geoid through gravimetric measurements. This project, called the World Geodetic System, attracted the attention and funding the US Air Force (386-387).
• The Mapping and Charting Research Laboratory was disbanded in 1959, with research now transferred to a new Department of Geodetic Sciences and all grant contracts being handled directly through the OSU Research Foundation. The Institute remained in existence, but as an interdepartmental appendage of the Department of Geodetic Sciences (395).
• Tensions over catering to regular or military students in the Department of Geodetic Sciences, as well as the loss of entrepreneurial grant-seekers like Dr. Doyle and Mr. Harding led to a decline first in the outside funding for the department and then to a decline in the overall geodesy program at OSU. Rivalries between academic faculties led the department to eventually be dissolved entirely within civil engineering in 1973 (400).
• The projects pursued by the Research Foundation were a mix of the aspirations of various disciplines to advance their own knowledge with Cold War military objectives. The scientists who drew up grant proposals did not see a conflict between the advancement of knowledge in their field and the research interests of the US military (388, 390-391). Their grants were drawn up with the Cold War specifically in mind (401).
• There were, however, still some conflicts over the scope of projects. The Air Force originally requested that the World Geodetic System project be classified and limited to Eurasia with a particular focus on Siberia, the Far East, and the Urals (389). The OSU scientists objected to both counts, but proposed that the project could operate declassified, thus allowing far greater collaboration, and still accomplish all goals if it had a global scope (390).
• This relationship fundamentally changed as satellite geodesy came into being, as projects became more classified and less civilian in nature. Projects from the 1960s onward, including the World Geodetic System, now had their structures, goals, and programs clearly set by the Department of Defense and the intelligence community (397-398).
• Under the new more heavily classified order than existed in the 1960s, there were still ways to share information and research related to classified projects. Research relevant to classified project was still carried out, but with reference to those projects omitted in the research itself (399).
• The attempts by geodesists to keep research declassified failed because they were too dependent on the military as a source of funding (401-402).
• OSU also assisted in the war effort outside of its Research Foundation, with OSU professors organizing army training programs on campus, producing classified maps of Japan for military use, running the Office of Strategic Services map program, surveying on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and being attach as map experts to various military divisions (375).
• This left many professors in the geodetic and earth sciences with important connections in the military and intelligence community (375, 379).
• It is unclear, but possible, that many members of OSU faculty had connections with Wallace Brode, the first director of scientific intelligence at the CIA, while he worked at OSU during the war. Mr. Brode is an important figure connecting American universities with the intelligence and military establishment, and organized CIA research departments along the same lines as university departments (379-380).
• Victory in the Second World War resulted in both the Americans and the Soviets recovering massive amounts of classified geodetic data from German archives. Under the aegis of Operation Paperclip, Major Floyd Hough and a team of several dozen men and women were sent to Europe in November 1944 to recover Axis maps of the Pacific Theater as well as any German optical and photogrammetric equipment. Major Hough's team also recovered massive amounts of geodetic data on Eurasia. These documents were moved to the USA and used by American geodetic research projects, like those at OSU (375-376).
• Determination of latitude and longitude was originally done through calculations based on the movements of celestial bodies, with general maps being demonstrated by comparisons between the observations made at different individual points, called reference ellipsoids. Geodetic data was based on the observations at set points taken in different countries. For example, for most of the 1900s, geodetic information for North America came from observations taken at Mead's Point, Kansas, in 1923. (376-377).
• The development of intercontinental weapon systems during the Second World War demanded the the reference ellipsoids between continents be connected, which could not be done under the current system that lacked these reference ellipsoids for oceans. To properly target new weapons, particularly ICBMs, the US government needed to know the actual distance between the continents (377).
• Determining the vertical position of a location, relative to the hypothetical sea level, referred to as the geoid, is difficult because Earth's mass is unevenly distributed and thus the geoid undulates over the Earth's surface more than a reference ellipsoid would predict (377). 
• The difference between the reference ellipsoid and the true geoid is determined through the use of plumb bobs, which hang toward the center of Earth's gravity. Calculating the angular difference between the plumbline and a line perpendicular to the reference ellipsoid, called the 'deflection of the vertical', is used to determine the actual undulations of the Earth (377-378).
• A formula to calculate the undulations of the Earth based on measurements of deflections of the vertical at a large number of points was developed by Sir George Gabriel Stokes in 1849, but this required measurements of gravity at sea, which was impossible at the time (378).
• The development of the multiple pendulum apparatus by Felix Andries Vening Meinesz in the 1920s allowed accurate measurements of gravity to be taken in submarines. However, there were still many cost and resource limitations to this project (378).
• The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in the 1850s exposed a further issue in geodesy, as plumb bobs were less deflected by the true mass of the Himalayas than they should have been while they were more deflected at shoreline measurements by the mass of the oceans. This sparked a massive century-long decade in geophysics over why this had occurred (386).
• Based on the theories of John Pratt and Biddell Airy, Charles Dutton developed the idea of 'isostasy' to explain the anomalies based on the idea that at some depth in the Earth all rocks had the same weight. This idea eventually became a core tenant of geodesy (386).
• The plumb bob method was replaced with satellite geodesy thanks to new discoveries after the Sputnik launch (395396). This was largely because the entire gravimetric model was based on the assumption of isostasy, which was disproved by CORONA flights that detected significant harmonic variations in Earth's gravitational field (396).
• W. H. Guier and C. G. Weiffenbach of the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins were able to measure the orbit of Sputnik based on the Doppler shift of its signals, a process that F. T. McClure was then able to reverse to allow the exact location of a radio signal to be determined if the location of the satellite and another transmitting radio were known (396).
• These discoveries were dependent on the ability to know the exact location of satellites as they orbited the Earth, which in turn required highly accurate information about gravity at high elevations (396).
• Historian of cartography, Anne Godlewska proposed that in the 1700s in Europe, geodesy, cartography, and geography were all a single scientific discipline, which then developed into the separate disciplines of geodesy, geography, and cartography. Meaning that in the 1700s, an advance in one field represented an advance in all field, which became less true over time. The author agrees, but adds that the disciplines again reunified in the USA and USSR during the Cold War around the sole purpose of enabling and preventing nuclear war (379).
• "Photogrammetry is the science of deduction of dimensions and spatial relationships of points, features, and objects in images, particularly in photographs. The science dates back to the Renaissance systems for rendering perspective by mechanical means, so photogrammetry long preceded aerial photography. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, photogrammetry was almost synonymous with the examination of sets of overlapping photographs of the earth obtained from aircraft" (392).
• One of the great figures of 20th Century photogrammetry was Frederic Doyle, hired by the Institute at OSU after working as a cartography for the Army Air Force in WWII. Dr. Doyle developed 'analytical photogrammetry', based on the idea of replacing mechanical instruments with analytical computations. His work dovetailed with the geodetic projects undertaken at OSU (391-392).
• Dr. Doyle was also a crucial figure in connecting aerial surveillance programs, like CORONA, with geodesy, as he worked at OSU until 1960, then began working as a chief photogrammetrist for the CIA CORONA program (398).
• In 1955, retired Colonel Richard Leghorn made the 'Open Skies proposal' that NATO and the Warsaw Pact conduct aerial surveillance of which other's countries to secure against surprise troop build ups. The proposal, which was endorsed by President Eisenhower but opposed by elements of the US staff of the Joint Chiefs, was rejected by the USSR at the 1955 Geneva Summit. The USA and USSR carried on with aerial reconnaissance of each other's territories anyway, but secretly (392-393).
• In 1955, after Mr. Harding had transitions back to the CIA, Dr. Heiskanen and Dr. Doyle attempted to use the US military's new interest in aerial surveillance to secure additional funding for advanced equipment that would facilitate this surveillance. They particularly promised that OSU could train people to use the equipment, thus meeting the demand for trained personnel in the US military. The training was remarkably successful and it is likely that every significant figure in geodesy and photogrammetry in the 1950s passed through OSU at some point (393-394).
• The launch of Sputnik in 1958 prompted the Eisenhower administration to launch the Advanced Research Projects Administration [ARPA], cancel the classified Air Force reconnaissance mission WS-117L and replace it with the CIA-led Operation CORONA, and created a special training program in geodesy and photogrammetry for military personnel at OSU, quadrupling the number of geodesy graduate students at OSU between 1957 and 1959 (394-395).
• The high proportion of OSU graduate students being directed there by the military created structural problems at OSU, as normal curriculum demands sometimes conflicted with the training needs of the US military (399-400).