Student Research Topic: Total Station historical pricing, how much did they used to cost?

Circa 1986, topcon gts 3b, was around 13-15k (they had a couple different models, with different accuracies) From memory, 3", 5" and maybe a 7" one.?ÿ

The Topcon GTS 3c was only specked as a 10" gun. It also lacked the 2 speed tangent screw.

But, it turned tight angles. It was more like a 4-5 " gun.

Cost was between $9 and 10k.

We still have that 3c. And, if i tried to ebay it, it might bring $300.

It's not for sale!

N

Welcome Kevin at OIT. Great school there but I am biased. I would suggest you talk to Paul Rydell at The PPI Group. He has been in sales longer than most in the pacific northwest and The PPI GROUP is about the oldest sales company in the area as well. They may have some old catalog records from previous decades that will help in your search.?ÿ p a u l r (at)theppigroup (dot) com. You can tell him Jered threw him under the bus...?ÿ ?ÿ I'll ask around here to see if we have any old records to help.

Ditto on calling Paul Rydell. I'm sure he would be a good resource.?ÿ Jeff Whitaker at Geoline could probably help you out also.?ÿ

One thing to consider is that a robot generally needs a data collector and software to operate.?ÿ That adds about $5k - $7k to the cost. Which may or may not be included in a persons recollections of the cost of a c.1990 TS.?ÿ

FWIW, I seem to recall a Leica 1010 (c.1992) costing $15k or thereabouts. That equates to about $27k in 2018 dollars.?ÿ That unit did have options on the EDM, which would affect the price also.?ÿ It also had far better optics than anything made today, but reflectorless wasn't a thing then.?ÿ ?ÿ

Ditto on calling Paul Rydell. I'm sure he would be a good resource.?ÿ Jeff Whitaker at Geoline could probably help you out also.?ÿ And Randy Stuart at Sitech in Portland was selling Geodimeters in the mid '90's.

One thing to consider is that a robot generally needs a data collector and software to operate.?ÿ That adds about $5k - $7k to the cost. Which may or may not be included in a persons recollections of the cost of a c.1990 TS.?ÿ

FWIW, I seem to recall a Leica 1010 (c.1992) costing $15k or thereabouts. That equates to about $27k in 2018 dollars.?ÿ That unit did have options on the EDM, which would affect the price also.?ÿ It also had far better optics than anything made today, but reflectorless wasn't a thing then.?ÿ ?ÿ

1995 or thereabouts the Mekometer 5000 (0.1 mm +0.1 ppm) costs $125,000 with all accessories.

It was purchased for crustal dynamics (read earthquakes) studies.?ÿ There are only 25 in the whole world I hear.

The accessories included the tripods, tribrachs, reflectors, thermometers, psychrometers, and barometers.

The Los Angeles River Calibration Baseline was measured with it. (That's where I calibrate my EDM's.)

Thanks very much for the help Norman, Jered and Nate. I have a 1980 Christmas Edition Jcpenny's catalog (Love Ebay)?ÿ that has an Atari Personal Computer listed for $1629.95, and came with 48k memory! The question of how much pricing has changed has been hard to find information on. I will follow those great contacts.

And thank you to Mr Lindell, 125K?? That is an amazing package. I lived in the Mojave , and spent some time by the L.A. river.

Then there's Moore's Law, and if that had any effect on the pricing. The total station did arrive with the explosion of the home personal computer.

I bought my first desktop in 1993 with a $2000 loan, 486 DX2 with 4 MB of RAM.?ÿ It was nice for the time but I'm sure I overpaid.?ÿ I ordered parts off newegg and built my first desktop about 4 years ago which cost me $2000 also, and the machine was (and still is) kind of a beast.?ÿ I'll never buy an assembled computer again after seeing how much of a colossal ripoff it is.?ÿ Anyway, carry on.?ÿ ??ÿ

1984, My first computer was an Apple IIc setup ($1,295) with a gross bundle of floppy disks, Apple Writer, Epson wide carriage dot matrix printer with spool ($300+) and Carlson Surveyor1 ($750)

Each file would hold 200 points (N,E,ELEV,DESC)

Yeppers, Carlson started out on Apple and it was awesome then and since converted to Windows a few later is more awesome.

1979 was running Wild T16 with D? Distomat and extra large brick battery, $14,000 was mentioned if I broke it.

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I bought a Topcon GTS-302 in 1993 for $10,200.00.?ÿ It was the current-year model and came with a TDS-48.?ÿ In late 2015 I bought a GeoMax Zoom80R 2-second robot for $17,945.00.?ÿ It had already been superseded by the Zoom90, so the price was discounted a fair bit.

Kevin,

As mentioned, contacting some of the salesman or sales departments with surveying instrument companies would be a good start- however you may have difficulty in finding comprehensive pricing information from commercial companies, as the prices could often be "flexible" based on the customer's size of an order, past purchases, relationships to the owners, etc... and difficult to get a true "retail" price in writing.?ÿ For most surveying supply companies, the actual pricing would not be listed online/ or in print- a surveyor would have to individually negotiate the price with the supplier, and account for extra add-ons such as warranty, annual maintenance, replacement / or loaner-equipment policy, etc.

However, your best option would be the State or Federal Government prices tendered by official contract with the instrument manufacturers; these are usually fixed for a period of 1-2 years, and represent a more comprehensive list of items and their cost. The gov't price may be lower or higher than the private-sector retail price, as it often included certain warranty/ repair/ maintenance requirements; but it's a good data point to start with- variables included the size of the department and amount of annual purchases; a state government is able to buy multiples of what a single surveyor would purchase.

Here are?ÿ links to the New York State pricing agreement with Leica Geosystems and Trimble for 2005-2006; this would provide you a range of retail prices for surveying equipment from that time frame.?ÿ

New York State Leica Price List 2005-2006

New York State Trimble Price List 2005-2006

There are 2 additional factors you should consider when comparing the prices of total stations from the past to current pricing:

1) The value of money decreases with time-?ÿ (due to inflation)-?ÿ a US Dollar's purchasing power today (2018)?ÿ is about 50% of what it was in 1989. (Inflation has historically averaged about 2.5% /per year, which means the value of money is going to decrease by 50% every 28 years).?ÿ You can determine this by researching the CPI (Consumer Price Index);?ÿ also the foreign exchange rate heavily impacted pricing from overseas for instruments that were manufactured outside of the US- (primarily Leica, Zeiss, Nikon, and others- especially the German and Swiss brands)?ÿ?ÿ

2). It's already been mentioned that the cost of computing technology follows Moore's law- computing power averages a doubling (2x) in processing speed/ memory?ÿ ~every 18 months or so.?ÿ?ÿ In the case of a total station, both the computer technology as well as the memory storage has improved significantly, but the real advantage has been the reduction in labor- what would take a 2 or 3-man survey team a week to do in 1990 may today only take a solo surveyor 1/2 of a day to accomplish using a robotic total station- so you may need to account for not just the technology improvements but also the change in surveying methods that are possible with newer equipment (consider also the advances due to drones, with lidar and full point-cloud scanning systems).?ÿ A method of evaluating this might be to also compare the cost of a total station compared to the typical wages of a surveyor (either hourly/ minimum wage or annual salary).?ÿ

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