In the 20th century more than 60000 torsion balance measurements were made in Hungary.
At present efforts are made to rescue the historical torsion balance data; today 24544
torsion balance measurements are available for further processing in computer database.
Previously only the horizontal gradients of gravity were used by geophysicists, but
there is a good possibility in geodesy to interpolate deflections of the vertical,
and to compute geoid heights from curvature gradients of gravity. First the theory
of the interpolation method is discussed, tha n results of test computations are presented.
We have selected a test area where all kinds of torsion balance measurements are available
at 249 points. There were 3 astrogeodetic points providing initial data for the interpolation,
and 10 checkpoints for controlling the results. The size of our test area is about
750 km2 and the average site distance of torsion balance data is 1.5-2 km. The standard
deviations of geoid height and deflection of the vertical differences at checkpoints
were about ą1 - 3 cm, and ą0.6? respectively; which confirm that torsion balance measurements
give possibility to compute very precise deflections of the vertical and local geoid
heights at least for flat areas. Š 2005 Akade?miai Kiado?, Budapest.
