Heliotrope (instrument)

The heliotrope is an instrument that uses a mirror to reflect sunlight over great distances to mark the positions of participants in a land survey. The heliotrope was invented in 1821 by the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. The word "heliotrope" is taken from the Greek: helios (Greek: Ἥλιος), meaning "sun", and tropos (Greek: τρόπος), meaning "turn".

For other uses, see Heliotrope (disambiguation).
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