Colonel George Strahan (1839 – 7 January 1911) was a British army engineer who served in the survey of India and served as Superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey from 1888 to 1894. Strahan was born in Ashurst, Surrey to William Strahan. After studying at

Eton Eton most commonly refers to Eton College, a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. Eton may also refer to: Places *Eton, Berkshire, a town in Berkshire, England * Eton, Georgia, a town in the United States * Éton, a commune in the Meuse dep ...

he joined the Addiscombe college in 1857. At Addiscombe George showed abilities in mathematics and drawing. Among his brothers, William joined the army, Aubrey joined the Geological Survey in Britain, Henry became a mayor of Hythe and another brother Charles followed William into India in the

Bengal Engineers The Bengal Engineer Group (BEG) (informally the Bengal Sappers or Bengal Engineers) is a military engineering regiment in the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army. The unit was originally part of the Bengal Army of the East India Company's Ben ...

. George went to India in 1860 to join the Bengal Sappers and Miners, Roorkee. He then served in surveying for the Ganges Canal and in 1862 he moved to the Survey of India. He worked in Central India initially followed by work in Rajasthan (Rajputana) in 1864 and then surveyed the Himalayas from 1866. From 1875 he worked with Mysore Survey. In 1881 he was moved to replace General W.M. Campbell in the geodetic surveys in the Nicobar Islands and in 1888 he became Superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. Strahan was involved in producing relief maps and because colour printing had not yet been introduced, he found

photozincography Photozincography, sometimes referred to as heliozincography but essentially the same process, known commercially as zinco, is the photographic process developed by Sir Henry James FRS (1803–1877) in the mid-nineteenth century. This method ...

unfit for his purpose. He retired in 1894 as Deputy Surveyor-General. He was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1869 and contributed notes on the comet of 1882, a meteor shower in 1885 and observed the eclipse of 22 January 1898 in Norway. Strahan designed sundials, one of which was placed in the

Dehra Dun Dehradun () is the capital and the most populous city of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and is governed by the Dehradun Municipal Corporation, with the Uttarakhand Legislativ ...

Survey Office. Strahan claimed that as a boy he had been influenced into landscape painting by a gift of John Ruskin's ''

Modern Painters ''Modern Painters'' (1843–1860) is a five-volume work by the Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, begun when he was 24 years old based on material collected in Switzerland in 1842. Ruskin argues that recent painters emerging from the tradition of ...

'' from his mother when he was just fifteen. He claimed that the book "taught me to see nature; all I know of nature and art I have learnt from it." He entered his paintings into the annual exhibitions in Shimla and won the Viceroy's prize three times. After retirement he lived for sometime in Dehra Dun but would travel to Kashmir in summer for climbs. He was also a violocellist and was a member of the Philharmonic Society of Mussoorie. He died at

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

. File:Rocks_Jabalpur_Strahan.jpg, Marble rocks in Jabalpur, 1883 File:Rocks Jabalpur Strahan 2.jpg, Rocks, Jabalpur, 1883

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Strahan, George 1839 births 1911 deaths Royal Engineers officers