This large mirrored ball was to be placed on the summit of Mount Taranaki / Egmont about 1900. Its purpose was to make the summit visible to surveyors below by reflecting sunlight. However, it never made it, perhaps because the Survey Department feared it would be vandalised, or destroyed by the rugged weather at the summit. The survey team that worked in Taranaki at the time was headed by Harry May Skeet, a surveyor at the New Plymouth survey office. He created a topographical map of the mountain which survived for over 60 years, until the results of a new survey were published in 1961. Skeet and his team carried the hundreds of kilograms of iron, lead and timber to the summit to build a trig station for their survey. Smaller mirrors on the station assisted with their initial measurements.