ED50

ED50 ("European Datum 1950", EPSG:4230) is a geodetic datum which was defined after World War II for the international connection of geodetic networks.

==Background== thumb|Gerlach Hemmerich Some of the important battles of World War II were fought on the borders of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and the mapping of these countries had incompatible latitude and longitude positioning. During the war the German Military Survey (Reichsamt Kriegskarten und Vermessungswesen), under the command of Lieutenant General Gerlach Hemmerich, began systematically mapping the portion of Europe under German military control. The Allies were also concerned about the state of mapping in Europe, and in 1944 the US Army Map Service set up an intelligence team to collect mapping and surveying information from the Germans as the allied armies moved through Europe after the Normandy landings. The group, known as Houghteam after Major Floyd W. Hough, collected much material. Their greatest success was in April 1945, when they found the entire geodetic archives of the German Army cached in Saalfeld, Thuringia. The shipment, 75 truckloads in all, was transferred to Bamberg, and then to Washington for evaluation.