How did people first deduce that Mount Everest was the highest mountain in the world?
Lost on Everest: The Search for Mallory & Irvine, by Peter Firstbrook, gives a description of the difficulties faced by early surveyors estimating the height of Everest. Access to Nepal and Tibet was denied, so the Himalayan peaks were measured from trigonometrical stations in British-Indian territory sometimes as far away as 240 kilometres. In the absence of better equipment, the early surveyors estimated altitude by checking the temperature at which water boiled. David Oliver, Borenore They just Googled “world’s highest mountain”. Jack Robertson, Balmain During the first half of the 19th century the British, lead by George Everest, and others, conducted the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. The observations of surveyor James Nicholson in 1850 provided the data, and the computations of Radhanath Sickdhar working in an office in Calcutta proved Mt Everest’s height. Nicholson presumably knew at the time of the observations, and Sickdhar soon after, but the knowledge was not reveale
