I used an Olivetti P-601 with the magnetic cards you had to run both ways thru to do one specific calculation.
Then we wrote the coods to six places in ink on the Mylar this was in 1977
Almost all topo of streets was a chain laid out on the ground with Hand 90s (Arkansas 90s as I learned moving to Houston) and then we swung the rag tape over the chain for the shortest distance
mlove5648, post: 425355, member: 5459 wrote: I used an Olivetti P-601 with the magnetic cards you had to run both ways thru to do one specific calculation.
Then we wrote the coods to six places in ink on the Mylar this was in 1977
Sorry it was an Olivetti P-602, I am getting old!!
My first job was as a rear chainman with a medium size land surveyor in 1971. My chief did all his calcs in the car by hand with a Illinois Tool trig function book. It was a slim pocket volume with the usual sin, cos & tan functions, but also had secant and cosecant as well to avoid division. Anyone remember those? First battery calculator I had was a Commodore, think it was 1972. Just did mult, div, add & sub, cost $50. A bit pricey for a guy making $100 a week.
I remember TI came out with one shortly after which did square roots, first real calculator, but couldn't afford one. First calculator with trig functions I could afford was the original TI-30, around 1976. LED display with a 9V battery. Changed my working life, could comp a highway job with my chief, wasn't long before I made chief. First programmable calculator I owned was the TI-66, was great fun learning to program it, but that was in the early '80s. College courses I took in the '70s required Peters 8-place trig tables, and Von Vega logarithm tables. Both thick volumes that were meant for the office, not the field. Thank goodness for the HP 41-CV or I never would have been licensed, but that's another story and decade.
David Livingstone, post: 425340, member: 431 wrote: In my area, they mostly surveyed the actual boundary lines along the boundary lines, or they worked on offsets if needed.
The slopes, fence, and trees are unworkable, they can't be directly occupied.
Offset calcing was the lesser of two evils.
As the other geezers have reported. Tables in books provided the data to calculate all sorts of things. Long hand or with slide rules. The first hand-held calculator I remember seeing was about 1972. Far to expensive for a married college freshman making $1.75 per hour with a wife making $0.65 per hour at the local T G & Y store. Remember renting one from a business supply store for something like $10 per day and all it did was add, subtract, multiply, divide, figure a square root and store one number. Used it one day for a particularly challenging semester final in one of my engineering classes.