"How high is Tarzan?" Roundabout the Heavenly Court. This is the sigh issued by Lu Ji, a famous literary figure in the Western Jin Dynasty, in the face of mount Taishan in the east of the clouds. For thousands of years, many literati and monks and Taoists have been trying to understand the true height of Mount Taishan and have made useful explorations for this purpose. Among them, the first to use scientific methods to measure the height of Mount Taishan and achieve remarkable achievements was the Ming Dynasty scholar Zhang Wudian
Zhang Wudian (1555-1626), zihe zheng, a native of Qinshui County, Shanxi, entered the soil in the 20th year of the Ming Dynasty, and was a former official in Shandong. When guarding the right side of the sea, every time there is a great wilderness in Shandong, the red land is thousands of miles. Zhang Wudian opened the sea to ban liaodong rice to relieve hunger, relieve the people from suffering, and made outstanding achievements. In 1621, he was appointed as the chief secretary of the Taibu Temple, and the following year he was appointed as the chief secretary of the Taibu Temple. In his later years, he unloaded his armor and returned to Theo Sangzi Douzhuang, and after his death, Emperor Mingsizong posthumously gave him the title of Crown Prince Taibao. Zhang Wudian has the "Collected Works of Sima Zhang".
In 1605, when Zhang Wudian was serving as the political director of Shandong Province and patrolling Jinan Province, he repeatedly took advantage of the opportunity of government affairs to visit Mount Taishan and conduct geographical crickets, and germinated the whimsical reverie of exploring the true height of Mount Tai. Zhang Wudian thought hard, repeatedly experimented, and finally carefully designed a set of measurement schemes adapted to local conditions. He carved a scale on it with a vertical pole that was one inch long, and placed an iron ring at the end of the pole. A rope is tied with an equally long double iron ring in the middle of the horizontal pole, and then worn in the ring of the vertical pole, so that the rope can be lifted up and down by the horizontal pole and can maintain balance. When measuring, look at the place where the vertical pole stands, and take 5 feet as a step to measure the distance. If on the flat ground, the horizontal pole can land horizontally, and the rear end is suspended, at this time, the scale of the vertical pole can know the size of the horizontal pole, so as to measure the height. In addition, a record book marked with 360 squares per page is used, and 1 block is filled in every 1 step of the test. In case of flat ground, fill in a "flat" word, if it is a slope, indicate the height. For every page filled for about 1 mile, the cumulative recorded size is the height of Mount Tarzan.
In the 39th year of the Wanli Calendar (1611), after Zhang Wudian finalized the survey plan, he sent Shengzhou to inspect Zhang Jiacai to conduct large-scale field surveying. From the foothills to the top, on the undulating mountain sun, after more than 4300 surveying and mapping points, it was finally successfully measured: the slope of Mount Taishan is 14 miles and more than 80 steps, and the vertical height of Mori Mountain is 368 and 34 zhang. Ming is about 0.32 meters per foot, which is equivalent to 11823 meters. Assuming that Zhang Wudian measured from the Red Gate Palace, the gateway of Mount Taishan, then add the sea dial height here to 250 meters, for a total of 1432.3 meters. This is very close to the accurate data of Mount Taishan's altitude of 1524 meters measured by precision optical instruments today.
Zhang Wudian. After successfully completing this protracted surveying work, in order to expound his academic insights, he personally wrote an article entitled "The Record of Taishan Daoli", which truly recorded his own measurement methods and data, leaving extremely valuable first-hand information for future generations.