Survey of India (1767 - Present) is India's central engineering agency in charge of mapping and surveying the country. It was founded in 1767 by Major James Rennell, who took the post of first Surveyor General, with the mission to map and consolidate the territories of the British East India Company. The Survey undertook the Great Trigonometrical Survey between 1802 and 1852 in an attempt to accurately measure the Indian Subcontinent - considered one of the greatest feats of mapping of all time. It also sponsored clandestine surveys, at times disguised as Buddhist pilgrims, to infiltrate and map Tibet, then a closed country. With India's independence in 1947, the Survey was folded into the new Indian government, which it remains part of to this day. More by this mapmaker...

Colonel Sir Thomas Hungerford Holdich (1843 - 1929) was an English geographer and president of the Royal Geographical Society. He served as the Superintendent of Frontier Surveys in British India and was the author of several books, including The Gates of India, The Countries of King's Award and Political Frontiers and Boundary Making. Born in Dingley, Northamptonshire, England, he attended Godolphin Grammar School and then the Royal Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1862 with a commission in the Royal Engineers. He served in the Bhutan expedition of 1865, the Abyssinian campaign of 1867-1868, and the Second Afghan War of 1878-79. During peacetime, Holdich was engaged in the survey of India, serving on the Afghan Boundary Commission of 1884-86, the Tasmar Boundary Commission of 1894, the Pamir Boundary Commission of 1895, and the Person-Baluchistan Boundary Commission of 1896. For his work on the Afghan frontier, Holdich was awarded the Founder's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1887. In 1902, he was engaged by the governments of Argentina and Chile in The Cordillera of the Andes Boundary Case to determine the boundary between the two countries along the Andes Mountains. Holdich retired on half pay in 1898, and was placed on the Retired list with an Indian pension on February 13, 1900. Following his retirement, he spent his time extensively writing and lecturing on geographical issues, and he served as the president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1917-19. He also contributed an umber of entries to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Brittanica. On a personal note, Holdich was married to Ada Vanrenen, with whom he had two daughters and two sons. Learn More...

G.W.E. Atkinson (fl. c. 1859 – 1898) was a British military surveyor and expert on Tibet, the Himalayas, and Central Asia who worked with the Survey of India in the late 19th century. He first joined the Survey in 1859 and worked his way up the ranks, eventually becoming a Surveyor of the First Grade in the Drawing Office in Simla and later Assistant Superintendent of the same office in 1894, retiring in October 1898 and eventually receiving the rank of Esquire in 1901 in recognition of his services. He was considered an expert on 'transfrontier geographical mapping' and published several accounts of Indian and Tibetan pundits who had explored Tibet and neighboring regions for the British (most notably Narrative Account of Rinzin Nimgyl's Explorations in Sikkim , Bhutan and Tibet , in 1885-86). He also produced important maps on Kashmir (Map of Kashmir, 1873), Central Asia (Turkestan: and the countries between the British and the Russian dominions in Asia, first edition 1875), and a series of gazetteer maps. Learn More...