Geodimeter In 1948 government geodesist Erik Bergstrand asked if AGA would like to manufacture a distance measuring instrument based on a new concept. The instrument, which was christened the Geodimeter, was completed in 1953. It could be used to measure baselines with a preciseness which had been previously inconceivable and in as many hours as it had formerly taken weeks. The instrument sends out a beam of light to a reflector located a few kilometers away and in less than ten billionth of a second it measures the time the beam needs to travel there and back. In this way the exact distance between the measurement points can be determined. The Geodimeter is now manufactured by Geotronics AB in a number of different models.