Of the theodolites in the late Charles Swart's collection (missing the Wild T-2 that was buried with him), this Kern DKM2 is probably the finest.
It is in what I consider to be immaculate condition. The possible exception is the thick red lacquer applied as a telltale to the various adjustment screws to show that they hadn't been turned since adjustment and calibration. I suspect it can be removed, but haven't tried. I also think that the red lacquer means that this one-second instrument was used in an industrial setting like an aircraft plant. That would explain how clean and pristine the instrument is.
I probably should have put something in this photo for scale just to show how small the DKM2. It's remarkably compact, a marvel of optical design. The tubular plate vial is not oversized.
That is the original model I referred to previously and which I used extensively in the field for control surveys. My experience is that besides being a Kern base (one reason it may not have been used much), it has inverted image optics, and the manually indexed vertical.
I always got along fine with inverted image instruments, my first being a similarly compact and light old T-16.
The DKM2 had very very good optics and also compact, there is nothing like it on the Wild side.
This is the one I recalled I had probably turned thousands of angles with. I used the old NGS standard 8 sets, indexing the horizontal circle at different angles on the plate, near 0, 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 and back around to 180. Also ran reciprocal verticals for trig levelling on most of my photo control jobs and it almost always seemed to work out. Lines were sometimes 6-8 miles in length. Almost always had superior results.
The instrument will always have a fond spot in my memories because of my many experiences with it. The kern base did betray me once as I had released the instrument lock and then picked up the tripod and the instrument slid off and fell the the ground. Thankfully, although on a rocky station point, it must have been broken gravel it fell into and no visible or operational damage.
One of the ancient pictures on my ancient web sites shows it.
Eventually Wild caught up and introduced a T-2 with auto indexing vertical that my employer acquired and I retired my DKM2's just before I moved on to other kinds of work.
Interestingly enough one of the two I used extensively out of our Denver office secretly followed me east, and after I retired while helping a friend inventory equipment in our 'cage' I found of MY instruments surplused from Denver sitting there. I had typed up the index settings for the circle and scotch taped it between the standards, still there. That brought back memories.
As we often worked alone or with only one assistant on the other end of the line, I sometimes read my angles into a tape recorder to speed up the observertion and probably still have some of those tapes from another job north of Deer Lodge.
I used them with Wild/Kern adapters and Kern/Wild adapters. EDM was almost always the great HP-3808 but earlier an ancient visible laser 'ranger IV'? Well I have posted pictures of it before, perhaps on RPLS.
On the job pictured based in Lima, MT, I came the closest I ever came to being killed by a bad combination of an insane employee, alcohol, and a few motor vehicles and a long road between Lima and Butte.
I really was appreciative of Montana's big sky/big earth duality on this job also. You can appreciate the earth a bit more when you can see so much of it at once, unencumbered by too many of the overt works of man. A lot of interesting things you see when you can see forever. I had 8 and 12 mile lines, and in one case it just shocked me that by backsight was 12 miles away as it was all so crystal clear.
I used to take most of my photos as slides and have not converted but a few of them to digital.
> I used to take most of my photos as slides and have not converted but a few of them to digital.
Ah, what great reminiscences. As for the Kodachrome slides: I'll bet they've held their color a heck of a lot better than most prints from that era have.
Besides there is no song about color prints but there is one about Kodachrome.
Perhaps all the bidding is taking place offline, but if not I'll open at $400.
Brings back some good memories....that's the instrument I learned on.
Hmmmm....also some bad memories, now that I think about it......:-)
