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Notes
1 This baseline from 1854 is so to say the ‘provisional’ baseline measured in the vicinity of Madridejos, not to be confused with the ‘ultimate’ baseline from 1858, slightly longer and measured with a new apparatus.
2 The Commission on Weights and Measures was created as an advisory body of the National Government of Spain for metricating the country, that officially took place on 19 July 1849. The conversion from the old to the new units was published in a Royal Order on 9 December 1852. The metric system was introduced as compulsory on 1 July 1880 (see more at González-Pumariega et al., Citation2002). The transition from the old units to the new ones is visible on maps from the 1850´s and part of the 1860´s. In general, the old units were used for drafts and the new units were used for final maps. Therefore, is one of the first maps to use the metric system in Spain.
3 The engineer wrote on the Memoirs the following words on the possibility of measuring the baseline near Tembleque (only 30 km north of Madridejos): “Stopping the General Road to Andalusia raises some difficulties because of the harassment that would be caused to the many carriages and stagecoaches that drive along it at all hours, whose passage would have to be intercepted whilst the road is being crossed for measuring, unless a side lane could be opened interim, costly in its construction however light it may be, and because of the compensation that it would be fair to make to the owners of the land it would be built on".