ED50

Some of the important battles of World War II were fought on the borders of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and the mapping of these countries had incompatible latitude and longitude positioning.

[3] Shortly after this, the team captured the personnel of the Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme, the State Surveying Service, in Friedrichroda, also in Thuringia.

This group had been working on the integration of the mapping of the occupied territories with that of Germany, under Professor Erwin Gigas, a geodesist with an international reputation.

They were directed to continue this work, in Bamberg in the US zone of occupation, as part of the US-led effort to develop a single adjusted triangulation for Central Europe.

Up to now it has been used in databases of gravity fields, cadastre, small surveying networks in Europe and America, and by some developing countries with no modern baselines.

[citation needed] The geodetic datum of ED50 was centred at the Helmertturm on the Telegrafenberg in Potsdam, (then East) Germany; the intent was to encourage cooperation with the socialist states during the Cold War, which failed.