In 1843 Andrew Scott Waugh took charge of the project as Surveyor-General, and gave special attention to the Himalaya peaks north of India. Because of clouds and haze, those peaks are only rarely seen from the lowlands, and until 1847 few measured sightings were achieved. Even after they were made, the results had to be laboriously analyzed by "computers" in the survey's offices--not machines, but persons who performed the trigonometric calculations.
The story is told that in 1852 the chief computer, Radanath Sikhdar, came to the director of the survey and told him: "Sir, we have discovered the highest mountain in the world." From a distance of over 100 miles (160 km), the peak was observed from six different stations, and "on no occasion had the observer suspected that he was viewing through his telescope the highest point on Earth." Originally it was designated as "Peak XV" by the survey, but in 1856 Waugh named it after Sir George Everest, his predecessor in the office of chief surveyor. Everest was the one who commisioned and first used those giant theodolites; they are now on display in the Museum of the Survey of India in Dehra Dum.
