I had a conversation the other day with a young fellow that was out surveying by himself with his RTK equipment. Saw him setting up his base and fiddling with the rover and then proceed to waltz around a site setting lath for what appeared to be grading stakes. Seeing how I own motor vehicles and blue jeans older than him, I thought I'd see if he spoke English.
He was actually a fairly bright young man. Went to work for a surveying outfit when his CE career was put on hold by life in the form of a pregnant girlfriend. He seemed positive and after a few key questions to size up his abilities, I decided he probably was helping the cause and not hindering. The conversation mutated to surveying equipment. He referred to TS work as "old school" and admitted with canopy and certain conditions he relied upon his robot. I was satisfied he understood what he was up against.
The conversation drifted to "back in the day" and he was curious about the older equipment. He had seen an old top-mounted EDM in a closet and was marveling at its shortcomings with only measuring a sloped distance and having to rely upon an operator calculated horizontal distance. I guess that kind of thing might seem weird to younger folks. After a few stories he made the observation that back in the late '70s and early '80s we were the "pioneers of the electronic age of surveying". I just agreed with a "I guess so". I left him to his tasks. Afterwards I started reminiscing about those days and some of the hurdles with which us "pioneers" had to contend. I remember one hurdle in particular was convincing our superiors the electronic equipment was capable of carrying and providing predictable vertical positioning as well as horizontal.
Now keep in mind, for those fortunate enough to have not lived through it, the old school 'chain-and-transit' camp (our bosses and employers) was a very skeptical bunch of folks. I even had a party chief that would make us drop a chain from time to time and "check" the distance displayed on electronic equipment. It was something that might not deserve trust...
After a few years of traverse closures in the 1:60000 range instead of 1:5000 some of the old guys were taking notice. I worked for one "progressive" company that actually allowed us to set the final centerline street control in new subdivisions with the EDM. Setting all the property pins was still, of course, left up to the standard chain and transit to avoid any costly mistakes.
And then Hewlett Packard came out with the 3810A; something they called a "total station". Its greatest feature was a theodolite style circle and an automatic reduction to horizontal distance feature that kept things simple. The day of the 'radial stakeout' and working from 'control points' had dawned. Now remember if your boss was ok with you shooting some topo in a radial fashion and reducing the points to a coordinate base, we still provided good vertical data with spirit leveling. I can remember jobs with 2 instruments set up; a total station AND a standard level. Two rodmen walked about locating features; one with a reflector rod and the other with a level rod. In a field book we recorded an azimuth angle and horizontal distance from some backsight and then kept running level notes on the opposite page. It kept a crew busy to say the least. And "reducing" the notes to any sort of COGO coordinate base was time consuming. We didn't even have HP41s at the time.
Now as the 'old school' bosses were starting to feel comfortable with distance measure WITHOUT a chain (tape), they still dismissed the equipment's ability to measure vertical distances as "not accurate"...so we continued to rely heavily upon electronically derived horizontal measurements and the whole time still breaking out the level and rod to determine vertical distances. But there was a knob on the front of the HP that looked like this:
For those unfamiliar with the equipment it is a gang switch that varied the LED displayed distance as slope, horizontal, vertical and zenith angle. That knob fascinated me. Now my boss is trusting this high-dollar rig to provide an internally calculated horizontal distance (all it actually measures is a slope distance) and then wants to tell me it can't determine vertical distances with any accuracy. Bullcrap. If the calculated horizontal distance was accurate, the vertical must be also.
I don't remember what job it was but I had the perfect opportunity to test it out. We had several control points that also had good spirit levels ran between them. With the help of drawing a little picture in the field book to keep track of rod height and instrument height, I shot all these control points and determined an observed elevation for them. Comparing them to the level notes revealed a fascinating accuracy. Although missing the record elevation by a few hundredths here and there..it was good elevations.
Of course my argument fell on skeptical ears. Just lucky shots. And my HI was determined with the laughable technique of holding the level rod on the control point and visually reading the rod at the trunion point of the instrument...I mean how sloppy can you be??! ....But us 'kids' in the field knew we were right. And we could prove it. The first time I actually used the technique was after another crew had muffed a level loop and couldn't find their blunder. We set up the HP on a hill and shot all the TPs. The location of the bust was located within a half hour...and nobody 'reran' the loop. Electronic determination of elevations had been used in a practical setting. This was 1979.
It took a good number of years for a lot of surveyors to actually depend on elevations determined by merely measuring a slope distance and a zenith angle. Nowadays we don't even think about it. Solo operators and their robots depend on this technology a great deal I would think. Of course keeping track of target height can be a challenge at times, but the human factor has always been the toughest thing with which to deal.
So if someone is going to consider me a 'pioneer' all I can say is you're welcome. Guys like me are the reason some trucks don't even carry levels regularly. And in those case the level rod has been reduced to some lowly, really crappy work. 😉
And if you think the development of the EDM and total station was the BIG deal of the last part of the 20th. century for surveyors; this old 'pioneer' will argue the point. While all that stuff is neat, the BIG thing was the development of the data collector. Filling up a field book with a description, point number, azimuth angle, horizontal distance, and then some sort of "Z" got really tedious. And then reducing all that info was drudgery.
God bless the man that invented the data collector...
paden cash, post: 388132, member: 20 wrote: While all that stuff is neat, the BIG thing was the development of the data collector.
10-4
Steve
Technology might always be evolving but the skepticism of the elders has not wavered.
My father still does not 'trust' prismless edm.
He sometimes checks it vs his prism shots. And still has yet to find a faulty shot (as long as the shot is clear and not through things such as branches etc)
I've even shot a mh rim elevation and door sill elevation both prismless, each about 75' from the instrument, and the elevations checked within a quarter inch of my prism shots. (Although I wouldn't recommend doing so due to the angle)
I started selling instruments in 1991; the Sokkia (Lietz at the time) SET instruments and Topcon GTS3 series were still recent developments and Sokkia was introducing a new data collector, the SDR33, to replace the SDR24. Soon after that, TDS came out with the Survey card for the HP48. These were real game changers, bringing a new level of capabilities to electronic data collection. I spent a lot of my demos back then explaining to transit and tape guys how the data collector could carry elevations and why measuring up the HI and HT was important.
Within a year or so I was going to school on this new (to us) thing called GPS, and another couple years after that RTK was the new standard. It's amazing how fast the technology advanced in the '90's and early 2000's. The digital level was (still is) an amazing piece of equipment, but GPS relegated it to a niche instrument. If not for GPS we would have sold hundreds of them.
Plus one for the data collector.
paden cash, post: 388132, member: 20 wrote: Electronic determination of elevations had been used in a practical setting. This was 1979.
That's the same year the firm I was working for got an HP-3820A. The elevations were so good that we started using it for everything. But it didn't take long to learn that the correction for refraction was unreliable over long distances, especially on 100å¡F summer days. We had tried to use the elevations from some half-mile shots, and those didn't work out very well.
paden cash, post: 388132, member: 20 wrote: "pioneers of the electronic age of surveying
Thanks for making me feel old this morning. I actually apreciate that I grew up in an age before the button pushers. Remember still writing down all the measurements in a field book even after the data collectors came out.
paden cash, post: 388132, member: 20 wrote: I had a conversation the other day with a young fellow that was out surveying by himself with his RTK equipment. Saw him setting up his base and fiddling with the rover and then proceed to waltz around a site setting lath for what appeared to be grading stakes. Seeing how I own motor vehicles and blue jeans older than him, I thought I'd see if he spoke English.
He was actually a fairly bright young man. Went to work for a surveying outfit when his CE career was put on hold by life in the form of a pregnant girlfriend. He seemed positive and after a few key questions to size up his abilities, I decided he probably was helping the cause and not hindering. The conversation mutated to surveying equipment. He referred to TS work as "old school" and admitted with canopy and certain conditions he relied upon his robot. I was satisfied he understood what he was up against.
The conversation drifted to "back in the day" and he was curious about the older equipment. He had seen an old top-mounted EDM in a closet and was marveling at its shortcomings with only measuring a sloped distance and having to rely upon an operator calculated horizontal distance. I guess that kind of thing might seem weird to younger folks. After a few stories he made the observation that back in the late '70s and early '80s we were the "pioneers of the electronic age of surveying". I just agreed with a "I guess so". I left him to his tasks. Afterwards I started reminiscing about those days and some of the hurdles with which us "pioneers" had to contend. I remember one hurdle in particular was convincing our superiors the electronic equipment was capable of carrying and providing predictable vertical positioning as well as horizontal.
Now keep in mind, for those fortunate enough to have not lived through it, the old school 'chain-and-transit' camp (our bosses and employers) was a very skeptical bunch of folks. I even had a party chief that would make us drop a chain from time to time and "check" the distance displayed on electronic equipment. It was something that might not deserve trust...
After a few years of traverse closures in the 1:60000 range instead of 1:5000 some of the old guys were taking notice. I worked for one "progressive" company that actually allowed us to set the final centerline street control in new subdivisions with the EDM. Setting all the property pins was still, of course, left up to the standard chain and transit to avoid any costly mistakes.
And then Hewlett Packard came out with the 3810A; something they called a "total station". Its greatest feature was a theodolite style circle and an automatic reduction to horizontal distance feature that kept things simple. The day of the 'radial stakeout' and working from 'control points' had dawned. Now remember if your boss was ok with you shooting some topo in a radial fashion and reducing the points to a coordinate base, we still provided good vertical data with spirit leveling. I can remember jobs with 2 instruments set up; a total station AND a standard level. Two rodmen walked about locating features; one with a reflector rod and the other with a level rod. In a field book we recorded an azimuth angle and horizontal distance from some backsight and then kept running level notes on the opposite page. It kept a crew busy to say the least. And "reducing" the notes to any sort of COGO coordinate base was time consuming. We didn't even have HP41s at the time.
Now as the 'old school' bosses were starting to feel comfortable with distance measure WITHOUT a chain (tape), they still dismissed the equipment's ability to measure vertical distances as "not accurate"...so we continued to rely heavily upon electronically derived horizontal measurements and the whole time still breaking out the level and rod to determine vertical distances. But there was a knob on the front of the HP that looked like this:
For those unfamiliar with the equipment it is a gang switch that varied the LED displayed distance as slope, horizontal, vertical and zenith angle. That knob fascinated me. Now my boss is trusting this high-dollar rig to provide an internally calculated horizontal distance (all it actually measures is a slope distance) and then wants to tell me it can't determine vertical distances with any accuracy. Bullcrap. If the calculated horizontal distance was accurate, the vertical must be also.
I don't remember what job it was but I had the perfect opportunity to test it out. We had several control points that also had good spirit levels ran between them. With the help of drawing a little picture in the field book to keep track of rod height and instrument height, I shot all these control points and determined an observed elevation for them. Comparing them to the level notes revealed a fascinating accuracy. Although missing the record elevation by a few hundredths here and there..it was good elevations.
Of course my argument fell on skeptical ears. Just lucky shots. And my HI was determined with the laughable technique of holding the level rod on the control point and visually reading the rod at the trunion point of the instrument...I mean how sloppy can you be??! ....But us 'kids' in the field knew we were right. And we could prove it. The first time I actually used the technique was after another crew had muffed a level loop and couldn't find their blunder. We set up the HP on a hill and shot all the TPs. The location of the bust was located within a half hour...and nobody 'reran' the loop. Electronic determination of elevations had been used in a practical setting. This was 1979.
It took a good number of years for a lot of surveyors to actually depend on elevations determined by merely measuring a slope distance and a zenith angle. Nowadays we don't even think about it. Solo operators and their robots depend on this technology a great deal I would think. Of course keeping track of target height can be a challenge at times, but the human factor has always been the toughest thing with which to deal.
So if someone is going to consider me a 'pioneer' all I can say is you're welcome. Guys like me are the reason some trucks don't even carry levels regularly. And in those case the level rod has been reduced to some lowly, really crappy work. 😉
And if you think the development of the EDM and total station was the BIG deal of the last part of the 20th. century for surveyors; this old 'pioneer' will argue the point. While all that stuff is neat, the BIG thing was the development of the data collector. Filling up a field book with a description, point number, azimuth angle, horizontal distance, and then some sort of "Z" got really tedious. And then reducing all that info was drudgery.
God bless the man that invented the data collector...
Used that HP3810A many time, beat chaining ÷¼
When I started, as a boy following a crew, I recall being happy when the transit and EDM was put away and the level came out. I wasn't very big, and the triple prism weighed a ton! The level rod, on the other hand, was much lighter and so much easier to carry. Carrying all those boxes into the office at the end of the day was another chore! Then the TS got acquired. Of course, it was a little while before a boy was allowed near this marvel, it was expensive, and revered, and just the wrong touch, oh my!But as I grew, I grew to learn to use the TS, and how to use it and get good results with it. Newer versions came along, and I found my favorite model. I left surveying for awhile, but came back to a office with a set of L1 gps receivers sitting in a corner, no one sure if they were safe to touch, or could be trusted. The kid what was hired to use them was the source of their error, but it took me a few weeks to learn that. After more weeks of learning, I convinced dad/boss to get us more training on these machines, that there was potential there, if we could use them properly. After training, we still don't use all our stuff to its full potential, but we use it to where we are comfortable with knowing the answers it gives us will be right, or we can figure out why they are wrong. We are the same with our computer programs. I know I can get my carlson to draw a swing path of a truck and trailer combo, but since I havent got it to look right yet, I dont trust it! I use what works. The saying we have is "Tell that machine gun salesman to go away, I don't have time for a demonstration, I'm to busy fighting Indians"
Jim Frame, post: 388148, member: 10 wrote: That's the same year the firm I was working for got an HP-3820A. The elevations were so good that we started using it for everything. But it didn't take long to learn that the correction for refraction was unreliable over long distances, especially on 100å¡F summer days. We had tried to use the elevations from some half-mile shots, and those didn't work out very well.
They were pretty darn good if you shot from both ends of the line. The splits were terrible but the average was pretty darn perfect after checking with a level. Great post, brings back a lot of memories. Being a young chief that radially staked a couple of tilt up buildings and was back at the office by noon. I still remember the look on the owners face when he asked how I was done so quick. When I told him I staked the corners radially and checked the distances between hubs with the chain he about lost his lunch. We had to go back out with him and his t-16 and turn 90's and pull chain until he was convinced. Changed the way we worked from that day forward. Jp
Jp7191, post: 388157, member: 1617 wrote: ... Changed the way we worked from that day forward. Jp
I remember a section boundary that nobody was looking forward to. The section was split on a corner by an interstate highway and one side of the section required a 4 mile detour route just to get there. This was back in the day when we still "bounded" the section by either traversing through the corners or using a traverse point set nearby. The work was estimated to take three or four days.
Before we started I pulled the truck up into the pasture (just for a coffee moment) and somewhere near the center of section I noticed we were on a ridge and could probably see every corner of the section from one spot, even those on the opposite side of the interstate. I set up the HP and we shot the boundary from one spot. We even had time that afternoon to check a couple of distances between corners just to see how our 'stuff' smelled. It was all good.
That evening the boss asked me how we were getting along. I told him we were done with the boundary. He was skeptical, but after I showed him what we had done he was apparently ok with it. Things changed after that, too.
I remember my old boss telling me about the HP they got in 1971. He got it the day before his son was born. Figured they had 4 days of chaining to do on a job, and got it done with the EDM in 3 hours. He never looked back,
Nice write up, as a young surveyor I enjoy reading about all of the troubles the senior guys had to face. It makes me wonder what advancements will be made by the time I retire.
On your note about levels no longer being needed; I agree to some extent, the conventional auto level doesn't seem to be any more accurate than a traverse with a modern total station, however, our new digital levels are extremely accurate and give amazing results when running level loops that are several miles long. The best thing about the digital level is the guy writing in the book cannot fudge the numbers a hundreth up or down and it requires them to have equal distances between to FS and BS. Those are things impossible to check unless you are right there with them.
paden cash, post: 388132, member: 20 wrote: It took a good number of years for a lot of surveyors to actually depend on elevations determined by merely measuring a slope distance and a zenith angle. Nowadays we don't even think about it.
There are still older gentlemen in our shop that insisted into the 2000's on having an automatic level used for their work. Through constant presentation of evidence applied over a decade, they have softened (or just given up?).
Of course, it is their stamp, and their name, and I always reminded myself that as a party chief it was my job to carry out the survey they way they wanted it, that ethically it was my job to be careful that they had responsible charge and direct supervision of what I did. As soon as they had no idea how or what or why I was doing what happened in the field, that ethical (and really legal) connection that allowed me to survey as their subordinate would be disturbed.
I only hope the crews out there right now are applying that taught and modeled ideal right now, and not "going off the reservation". 🙂
Yes, these old dinosaurs in offices next to mine pioneered the revolution we are now experiencing. The changes they experienced and embraced are so extreme that their extreme flexibility and innovation should be recognized and celebrated. (And their lack of degrees on the wall should not make us judge them.)
If we have the same attitude and mindset we too will emerge from the challenges we face. This is the key to preserving the industry, and attracting new professionals to our ranks. These guys, while I make them sound like dinosaurs, have always been a kind of renaissance outdoors man and this is attractive. It is part of what attracted me to the profession. The mindset and attitudes of the industry as a whole were attractive. We are active outdoors scientists and experts of dark arts and professional truth tellers. If someone doesn't think that is cool, I don't want them in my industry.
If we move into a "woe to me" attitude, we reject the real underpinnings and legacy of our profession. Let us make changes, but not despair. The EDM didn't destroy the last generation, and the laser scanner and GPS shouldn't destroy us.
PS, I agree about the data collector.
Some of you folks are damn old! 🙂
I started surveying in 1989 at the ripe age of 12. Back then, we still REGULARLY used chains and theodolites because, well, for some things, it was just faster. I remember my dad taking an old paragon we have, setting the declanation of the compass to match that of a traverse line, and getting down in a very large creek, and running compass and chain for the meanders and checking into the hubs at the end. I think I was 14.
Fast forward to 1993, and I was now a 16 year old instrument man. My weapon of choice (theirs not mine) was the 1982 model GTS 2B. No HD's, all manual reduction. No port for a DC. We had at the time, a GTS 303, and we used a TDS 48 on it, but it was reserved for the senior instrument man, and being the boss's son, that was not me.
Moving forward still to 1995, I turned 18 that summer. That was a summer of a lot of new things. I graduated high school in may at 17, was set up ready for college, still running the damn 2B, and we had a large work load that summer that had us work 36 days straight to finish the project with three crews. My girlfriend never saw me and I understood what tired really was. Sometime in August, we were finished with the job, and I wanted to get off early, so I left the 2b shooting distances in the box at lunch. The chief, who is now registered and owns his own firm, said we had to keep working so it being a 2B, the only thing it needed the battery for was to shoot the distance. We chained three more lot jobs that afternoon. 2man crew, chaining, that sucked.
That same month, my dad bought a Trimble 4000 ssi. I was not allowed to ask questions about it or even think about touching it. Took an hour to set up but wow! Control on the spot!? You mean we didn't have to run that line!?!? WTF?
Today, we have robots, scanners, base/rover RTK set ups, cell net RTK set ups, rangers, nomads, et cetera. Who knows what cool gear is coming out tomorrow?!?! Either way, this summer marks the 27 year I've been surveying and I'm 39. What I can say is that I saw the tail end of the "good old days" and I'm for damn sure that the good old days weren't that damn good. I can't wait for the next cool gear to come out so I can continue to be the pioneer of this age (maybe). I remember all the checking we did with GPS against conventional loops. Same thing as the autoranger vs. the chain that happened around the time I was born. Now we test the cell net gear vs. the base/rover setup to ensure quality. What could possibly be next!?!?
My son works for an engineering company surveying and all the GPS gear died, but the dc and gun worked. He told the chief that it wasn't an issue, they could just run and loop the job. The chief, several years his senior, had never done one and, according to my son, told him how to do it, and he kept the notes the way his daddy taught him, and his daddy's daddy taught him. The old hands in the office were more than a little impressed at the knowledge base from a mere 18 year old college kid. Made my day when he told me that story.
dmyhill, post: 388164, member: 1137 wrote: There are still older gentlemen in our shop that insisted into the 2000's on having an automatic level used for their work..
I still carry one, and use it from time to time. While running into someone older than me doesn't happen often anymore; there are a lot of older superintendents that are narrow minded. Sometimes its easier to make them happy and give them some grade stakes with a level and rod than endure them calling everyday wanting a grade checked because "that cut just don't look right...".
When data collectors first came out I stored everything in there not knowing any better.
Many companies insisted on booking control well into the DC era.
I joined an office in 2003 that was still booking control and using an awful laptop based program called Penmap for topo. We had a Trimble RTK system with a TSC1. I managed to connect it to a TCA1102+ with a kluged together set of cables. Told the old timer on the crew I am using that for everything but he didn't think my boss wants to do that. Told my boss and he said yes that makes sense.
There is something to be said for hands-on measurement like the old days.......
Was on a site, guys were beginning to lay out road stakes, one on the north side, one on the south side, two black boxes, they had about four stakes on each side and I took a quick look and asked; "does this look right to you two?"
Pretty sure the developer didn't want an 80' wide pavement section for this road servicing about 12 lots.
Turns out they both had put in the full width instead of 1/2 the width in the black box........
They probably would have caught on pretty quick but still............THAT wouldn't have happened back in the days of laying out centerline and taping left and right at each station.
GTS 2B, I liked that instrument. the one I used would shoot a long ways, reliably, locked down good, the fine adjustment knobs were easy to use but not silly sensitive, and the battery didn't surprise crash. I let the other guys have the newer guns for a long time.
Dave Karoly, post: 388170, member: 94 wrote: ..Many companies insisted on booking control well into the DC era..
In 1989 I was working for a Tulsa based CE firm. The owner was Cline Mansur, PE. Not only (according to him) did Cline Mansur single-handedly design the entire interstate system in the United States he actually helped Thomas Jefferson draft the rectangular survey system (PLSS) for public lands. Arguing with Cline involved nothing but listening. The survey crews had been equipped with good electronic equipment for a few years, but a lot of the field procedure had to be "hidden" from him and his old-school ways to avoid any "friction" from the top.
The company had been hired to prepare plans for a couple of miles of heavy urban arterial road widening (Lewis or Harvard Av., I can't remember) and the field crews were chomping at the bit to use new equipment and SDR data collectors. All went well until Cline wanted to see the field books to check on how the crews were doing...I'm sure he expected to see a lot of "station and offset" standard notes.
They were able to keep him at bay long enough for the CAD tech to write a LISP routine to tag a point and have it labeled "distance and offset" from a given centerline. They had couple of guys stay busy "creating" the field books, after the fact, from what we would call "standard" TS topo nowadays! Cline was never the wiser.
BTW, I used that LISP routine well into this century it was so good.
