Fourcade Surveying Camera

3D Model

This is an important hertiage artefact located at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. In 1901, a remarkable scientist named Henry Georges Fourcade presented a paper to the South African Philosophical Society in Cape Town, called “On a stereoscopic method of photographic surveying’’. It establishes a new theory of 3D measurement and mapping from stereopairs of photographs. It took 3 years to manufacture the equipment needed to carry out the work, and in 1904, the Surveying Camera was delivered to Fourcade in Cape Town. It was used in 1904 to take 2 photographs of Devil’s Peak (part of Table Mountain). Fourcade was able to produce a good contour map of the mountain, the first-ever terrestrial map made by stereophotogrammetry.

Model produced by Global Digital Heritage Afrika in April 2024. Scanned with an Artec Leo handheld 3D scanner.