Map Projection Coordinates per Bruce McCall

Kent McMillan · 2012-09-26T00:54:44Z

A thread below extolling the merits of custom projections to generate coordinate systems oriented Northish or (presumably) Record Northish led me to borrow my neighbor's time machine to visit the alternate future that would include them. I wanted to see whether it was mostly a bug or a feature.In this future, every surveyor created a custom projection for every parcel that he or she surveyed, the object being to make the bearings of lines as reported match the bearings of lines described in the instrument of record that created the boundary. Apparently, in the future land title insurance companies will send out teams of their representatives to harass surveyors who report the actual directions of lines, so after some ugly incidents, most surveyors decided that custom projections were the way to go. The land title insurers were happy and everything seemed cool while the deed records filled up with metes and bounds descriptions, each based upon a unique map projection.There was some initial difficulty but one prolific firm realized that they were going to be generating thousands of different projections and to keep better track of them they adopted a naming convention incorporating (a) the project name, (b) the date the projection was created, and (c) whether they'd been paid for the job. This was widely copied.When the objection was raised that the distances reported didn't match the record as well as the title insurer expected them to, a custom scale factor was introduced that would produce grid distances that on the whole didn't seem very far off those reported in the deed records from a prior survey of the tract.After a while, surveyors discovered that it was a neat idea to keep the parameters of their custom projections secret. After all, if any other surveyor wanted to know the latitude and longitude of a particular corner, he or she could just go out and survey it, right? Unfortunately, the meter on the time machine was running out, but I could see that things were looking ugly, so I didn't stick around to watch the whole spectacle played out. Bruce McCall - Faux Nostalgia

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time machine caption contest

is this what it looked like? Kent, is this your neighbor?
fill in a caption if you wish

Posted : September 26, 2012 1:37 pm

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Map Projection Coordinates per Bruce McCall

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