Mendeleev’s Maps Measures and the Magnetic Mountain

It is a cold summer day in the Russian steppe. A convoy of scientists is taking measurements of hills, carrying around portable magnetic instruments. They seem excited by their findings .  The team consists of Petr  Zemyachenski, a professor of mineralogy at St. Petersburg University, Semen Petrovich Vukolov, a chemist and assistant at the Laboratory of Science and Technology and the technologist Konstantin Nikolaevich Egorov, a member of the Main Department of Weights and Measures.
Dimitri Mendeleev, the prominent Russian scientist, has assembled this team to join him in his trip to the Ural Region, the Southern Russia. Mendeleev is sixty-five years old and his health is poor. He has made the long and arduous trip from St Petersburg, determined to find the causes for the stagnation of the Ural Industry.