It's that time of year in Alaska, the nights are looong and the weather is more condusive to tossing another log on the fire and firing up the sauna. I finally get a chance to catch up on reading a book or two. I've got shelves full of technical books and manuals but what I really enjoy reading are historical books on surveying topics.
One I would highly recommend dealing with Alaska is 'Boundary Hunters': Surveying the 141st Meridian and the Alaska Panhandle by Lewis Green. Great book on how the Alaska Canada boundary was surveyed through some of the most challenging country on earth in the early 1900s. These guys had serious cojones.
Anyone care to recommend some of their favorite titles on the subject I can check out?
Thanks ~ Willy
Undaunted Courage by Stephen E Ambrose. It's a Lewis and Clark Expedition story
"Great Surveys of the American West"
http://www.amazon.com/Surveys-American-Exploration-Travel-Series/dp/0806116536
Originally recommended to me by a surveyor from Alaska!
Williwaw
Try WYOMING - MONTANA Border (they followed the 45th-1879)by Bruce H. Blevins
You can find it on the Montana Surveyors website. MARLS.com/Market Place/MARLS market placed order form.
Interesting read
That Boundary Hunters book must be good.
Amazon ranges from $70 (used) to $1050 (new)!
Sort of in the general area, although I've not yet read it: Through the Yukon Gold Diggings by Josiah Edward Spurr of the US Geological Survey, available for free on Project Gutenberg. He arrived in the Yukon in 1896, just before the Gold Rush.
Measuring America: How the United States Was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History
by Andro Linklater
http://www.amazon.com/Measuring-America-United-Greatest-History/dp/1400130905
"The Mapmaker's Wife" (can't remember the author's name) tells about a triangulation project in Peru about 1735. The king of France sent an expedition there, along with another one to the far north of Scandinavia, to get the ground length of a degree of latitude for geodetic purposes. The "Wife" of the title was a Spanish colonial woman who married one of the French surveyors and later had a harrowing journey down the Amazon to join him on the Atlantic coast, also told about in the book.
"The Great Arc", by John Keay, is the history of another triangulation project in India, from 1802 to about 1875. That was a British project. Among other things they ran a net north from the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas, about 1700 miles. Their primary assignment was to establish control for mapping, but again the surveyors wanted a north-south ground distance to improve the geoid of that day. As an incidental, they triangulated the elevations of a dozen or so Himalayan peaks, including one that they named for the man who was then in charge of the survey, George Everest.
I don't know if either book is in print, but they're most likely available on e-bay. I have an extra copy of "The Great Arc" if you want it.
There is a new book that came out last year. On the Map, it is a really good read. Lots of nice pictures in it and tells some stories of how maps in general have changed the world. I really enjoyed it.
If you liked "The Mapmaker's Wife" you might also like "Measure of the Earth" by Larrie D. Ferreiro. It is somewhat the same story but told more from the perspective of the expedition itself.
Thank you all. Time to do a bit of Christmas shopping for myself! There are some great titles here and I'm looking forward to reading all of these I haven't read yet and some a second time. For those who haven't read 'The Great Arc', it is a fitting tribute to one of the most monumental surveying undertakings in history. George Everest's home is not a half mile from where I went to school and is still there though in poor shape.
Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West
Check out Dava Sobel the author of related books - good stuff on the French Surveys in Sweden and (now) Ecuador (then) Peru to determine the size and shape of the Earth. Was it oblate (Newton) or prolate (Cassini)?
There's a two-hour movie for sale on DVD about the invention of the chronometer by John Harrison that's pretty entertaining.
