We tend to think of a nadir as being above. Outside of photogrammetry, a nadir is a low point. Nadir was taken from the Arabic nazir, meaning “opposite.” Unlike most of the words on this list, nadir hasn’t evolved past the Medieval Latin nadir. The first aerial photographer was Gaspar Felix Tournachon, who often used the pseudonym 'Nadar'. You’ll see it: throughout our website - such as the Surveying and Mapping industry section.Definition: a representation of an area of land or sea.And no doubt the buzzing flight of an RPV also reminded them of another flying buzzer.” Map “Using drone for the RPVs emphasized the fact that they had no mind of their own. They are renowned for a sort of mindless, driven existence: they don't gather honey, they don't defend or maintain the hive, and their only purpose is to impregnate a queen bee. “Drones are bigger and heavier than worker bees, and they leave the hive and swarm in the fall. The leap from Queen Bee to drone is just an extension of the metaphor. This remote controlled aircraft was a variant of the Tiger Moth plane, which was common and also named after an insect. Long-range drones armed with atomic bombs could be flown by accompanying mother ships to their targets and in for perfect hits.”īut why name an aircraft after a bee? That decision was made in 1935, when the DH.82 Queen Bee took to the skies. Some day huge mother ships may guide fleets of long-distance, cargo-carrying airplanes across continents and oceans. “Drones, as the radio-controlled craft are called, have many potentialities, civilian and military. Like many English words, it has its roots in proto-German: dran.ĭrone has been used as a term for UAVs since at least 1946, such as in this Popular Science magazine article: The word is from the Old English dran or dræn. You’ll see it: when we discuss making maps such as in this article about large frame sensors.ĭJI Phantom 4 is one of the most used and well known drones for aerial mapping.īefore drone meant UAV, drones were male honeybees.Definition: the science or practice of drawing maps.Perhaps because (as we’ll see later), the term topography only began to be used well after Brazil was colonised.

Agrimensor is only used in Brazil: in Portugal the preferred term is topógrafo. Agrimensors were also called gromatici as they carried a groma or gruma, the precursor of a modern surveyor’s rod, strung with plumb lines to measure lines and angles and build an empire. The word is taken directly from the Latin: agrimensor also meant “surveyor” in Ancient Rome. In Brazilian Portuguese, agrimensor doesn’t mean agronomist, but surveyor. We reach agronomy from the Greek agronomos, meaning “overseer of land.” Nomos meant 'law or custom, administering.' So the modern “science of soil management and crop production” comes from the ancient “law of the land.” The root ag has grown into words as diverse as acorn, peregrine and pilgrim. It shares a link with the Sanskrit ajaras (meaning “plain” or “open country”) and the Greek agros (which you’ve already guessed means “field”, as does the Latin ager, the Old English æcer and the Gothic akrs) from where we derive the word acre. It’s a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'field' - which is probably already a derivative of the root ag, which means to “drive, draw out or move.”

Precision agriculture coupled with advanced machinery improves farming techniques and methods, saving money and resources.Īgro is the sort of ancient term which excites etymologists.

Drone definition dictionary