Whether or not it's favorable is contentious, but the facts remain I have personally experienced a good amount of the changes in our profession over the last 50 years.
When I started surveying in '68-'69 we literally used equipment from the previous century.?ÿ And excluding advancements in optics, we pretty much operated with field procedures that Egyptian pyramid builders or Roman aqueduct masons would readily recognize.?ÿ If it ain't broke, don't fix it someone once said...
As a young man I remember dreaming of saving time and labor with not-yet-invented contraptions.?ÿ After EDMs came along I thought of a radio-controlled "robot" along the lines of a radio-controlled model car I had given my son for Christmas.?ÿ The robot could be directed to a corner location, and with the aid of an on-board pneumatic gun, fire an iron pin or a hub into the ground at an exact location.?ÿ All this could be accomplished comfortably behind the instrument.?ÿ
Of course this was just a muse and never came to fruition.?ÿ But what really fascinates me is how far reality has surpassed my youthful pipe dreams of the "ultimate" surveying tools.
I remember tackling multi-section boundaries armed with just chain & transit.?ÿ Line clearing was a common factor in the process of locating traverse stations. Some boundaries literally took a crew weeks to complete.?ÿ One man can easily complete the same survey today in a matter or hours.?ÿ
I remember tagging along with my father one day to his jobsite along the south face of a couple of mountains we called "Buffalo Peaks" in Chaffee Co., CO. This was during the construction of the Homestake water line from the divide down into South Park.?ÿ It was early summer 1964 and some hot-shot "scientific" surveyors were checking base-line control with contraptions called Electrotapes.
At the time my father was far more fascinated than I was with the ability to calculate a slope distance electronically.?ÿ It looked like a lot of trouble to me but I guess their results were irrefutable.?ÿ My father was correct with his prediction that equipment like the Electrotapes would change my world, but probably not his too much.
Little did I know that ten short years later I would be using an HP3800 in much the same fashion.?ÿ And yes, it still boggles my mind.?ÿ Like Marty McFly I'm stupefied with all the advancements we have here in the "future".
We've come a long way in our profession.?ÿ And watching a metamorphosis of micro-chips blossoming from compass needles has been fascinating.?ÿ I'm glad I got to see it.
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Great reflection of your experiences with the genesis of surveying technology.
And watching a metamorphosis of micro-chips blossoming from compass needles has been fascinating.
Beautiful !
Dad loved independence. I entered this world in 1965. Born in a 1 room cabin, in northern Madera Co. California. Nearest town was Coarsegold. We had an outhouse, and a greenish Tecumseh generator, that could run an electric drill, or saw. Refrigerator was run by propane. Goats, chickens, and a 1957 Ford Panel truck were my childhood companions. City folks would get stuck in our driveway. Because they had "road tires".
I learned to place a nail. Through the tail end of a 200' tape when I was 5 yrs old. And, hold on tight. Thus began my career. In 1976, we got up early one day, and took an EDM shot before the sun shimmer could block the EDM'S rays, reducing range.
We used a 1923 Adolph Lietz Transit until 1986, when we got a used k&e autoranger. Mounted on a TM-20C theodolite. That was our first move away from manual measuring.
It would be about 1988 before we got a total station. GTS-3c Topcon. New. Dad nearly returned it, the next day. He could not stand debt. We had to promise to pay for it, as he'd druther keep working with the 2-pc autoranger, theodolite combo, than to owe anything.
Time marches on. Laden's story brought it to mind.
I still remember holding that tape on jobs in and around Coarsegold, and cutting firewood with a handsaw, or bow saw. We never heated with anything other than a wood stove. Still do. Wood stoves heat your bones. If you ever work around the Coarsegold area, and find a brass tag RCE 515, that would be dad, working under Joe McKee. RCE was "Registered Civil Engineer".
It's been a while.
Still heat with wood. I'm getting older now. Gotta go start the wood stove.
N
My career started in 1975, August 11th. My dad wasn't a surveyor, he was a janitor; but he was proud that his son was working in an admirable profession. I remember how happy I was to have landed such a great job. I still wake up every morning, excited to go to work!
If you draw a time line, starting with the Egyptians building the Pyramids; through George Washington, mapping the new world and marking the boundaries; to August 11, 1975, it stays pretty flat, not much had changed. But at that point in time, the line takes a big curve up, starting to climb. Fast forward to March 24th 2023 and the line is well on it's way through the roof! What will the future bring
We are only limited by our imagination.
The unmanifest will become the manifest; no matter how hard the Zealots try to stop it
These are the types of stories that drew me to Surveying in the beginning. They are what I missed when i was doing other geomatics stuff and wanted to so badly get back to boundary surveys. I was very lucky as I took my first survey courses my first mentors took what i was learning and taught me how to apply it the older way before doing it the newer way. So for me doing stadia topo stell tape and chaining pins around a rural boundary. Then we would run the traverse again with total station and such. Yall old timers need to keep telling the stories. Be like coon hunters and fishermen. They always tell the stories and you will attract the next generation. Then mentor them and keep the profession thriving. I see hope for sure. More and more are coming in now its up to those to meep them and seperate the wheat from the chaffe
First job on my own involved a 99-foot steel tape (end had broken off), a digging bar, a shovel. flags for chaining pins and a standard recreational metal detector borrowed from a neighbor. No instrument needed. Employed my high school-age nephew for the day. Rained most of the day. Dug up two stones that day.
@holy-cow Do they even still make the steel tape repair kits. I messed one up once was in a back lots of a subdivision and we had pulled the distance. 3 man crew. I was in the middle ish. And darn if I didn’t stab the brush axe and cut that sucker. To a section of an d one and patched it back but had it off a foot when riveted it back together. Add tape so only foot marks and end had tenths and hundredths. We almost never had that house to close until we figured out i had messed up.
First job on my own. I didn't have a driver's licence. I was 14. I got into that 1957 Ford Panel truck, with that 1923 Adolf Leitz transit, 200' tape, plumb bobs in a 1 gallon can, ditchbank blade, and some flagging. Drove 2 miles down the road, and picked up Darrel Bliss. He was older than me, married, with kids my age. Dad had me have him drive to the job.
Job was in Langley AR. We ran a closed loop traverse, from the c-1/4 north 1/4 MI, to a fence corner, tied it, ran west to the paved road from Langley to Albert Pike Rec. Area. Then south. To where we started. Reduced the angles to bearings. And then dad computed it into latitudes and departures, on a TI-55.
It's been a while.
Nate
Dad always told it that I found my first corner when I was five. I was tagging along on the recon part of a small survey. I was trying to balance on this metal thing sticking out of the ground. Dad was a few feet away digging. I asked what he was looking for. He mumbled something about a pipe. "Dad, it might be right here"... "No, son. The dip needle says here." So I watched him dig. After a short time he glanced over as I balanced perfectly on that metal thing. "SON! Why did you let me keep digging?". I was born in 1968 when my Dad was 52. I learned the old school ways. Man, don't ever forget to yell "chain" when the end of the tape gets there and you grab it. The front chainman didn't like his arm getting yanked. He'd remind you the next time he came to an electric fence! I remember being woken up before daylight on Saturdays to go survey... I remember Dad waiting in the truck when I got off the school bus, ready to go survey! Oh how I hated all that. When I graduated from HS, I was done. I wasn't going to survey anymore. I worked for two years in a local industry before realizing it wasn't for me. Dad was busy and asked if I would come work on the crew with him. I said only if we could get a distance meter. I think he already had it ordered. I felt so at home on the crew. I had actually missed surveying. Thus it began. My love for the profession. I started working towards licensure. Dad passed the day I got the letter with my number. It was the last thing I ever told him. I tell my stories and the stories my Dad told me, to my younger son. He's 26 with six years under his belt. And he's one of our crew chiefs. I have a picture of my son digging up a corner his grandfather set 30 years prior. In my surveying life I've seen it go from transit and tape to Robots, GPS and Lidar! From Vellum to CAD to digital recording. Not discounting drone technology, I'm just not utilizing that yet.
Great stories!
I remember my first day on the crew, aged 16, summer of '61. The first thing I was told was, "Set the tripod up before you take the transit out of the box."
First day on another crew, summer of '63, I was told, "In surveying, you can get in a lot more trouble making mistakes than you can by being slow."
"In surveying, you can get in a lot more trouble making mistakes than you can by being slow."
I was told: "Speed will come with time, do the job right, and you will eventually do it fast".
That's pretty good. "Don't skip steps, it'll always affect something".
Nate
I can recall starting the measurement of a half mile of line by pulling a 25-foot offset as it would be impossible to measure a line fully occupied by mature hedge trees. Then, this offset line was measured with a 100-foot steel tape and chaining pins through waist-high grass, always attempting to maintain what we viewed as the 25-foot offset from the true line. When we reached a distance close to the apparent corner, we would then do a 3-4-5 triangle with the tape to move back onto the boundary line. Last, was to measure the additional distance to the corner. Precisely, 2635.8 feet or something similar.
How do you think it was done by those who went before us?
When boundary surveying the only time I think about being fast is walking and cutting line. When I’m doing recon my only consideration is being thorough. If it’s there I want to find it. My emphasis hasn’t changed in the last five decades. As the signing surveyor the main emphasis should be on research and recon.
