PRIDE OF NEPAL

Mount Everest

Naming

The Tibetan name for Mount Everest is Chomolungma or Qomolangma (meaning "Mother of the Universe). In the 1960s, the Government of Nepal gave the mountain an official Nepali name: Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा), meaning "Head of the Sky".

Messurement

Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal, was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak in 1852, using trigonometric calculations based on measurements of "Peak XV" (as it was then known) made with theodolites from 240 km (150 miles) away in India. Measurement could not be made from closer due to a lack of access to Nepal.

More recently, the mountain has been found to be 8,848 m (29,028 feet) high, although there is some variation in the measurements. The elevation of 8,848 m (29,029 ft) was first determined by an Indian survey in 1955, made closer to the mountain, also using theodolites. It was subsequently reaffirmed by a 1975 Chinese measurement. In both cases the snow cap, not the rock head, was measured. In May 1999 an American Everest Expedition, directed by Bradford Washburn, anchored a GPS unit into the highest bedrock. A rock head elevation of 8,850 m (29,035 ft), and a snow/ice elevation 1 m (3 ft) higher, were obtained via this device. Although it has not been officially recognized by Nepal, this figure is widely quoted. Geoid uncertainty casts doubt upon the accuracy claimed by both the 1999 and 2005 surveys.