The History of Surveying | Hacker News Reader

The History of Surveying

alifewithoutlimits.com.au

23 pointsbarbazoo12 comments

Former land surveyor here. I worked for about 10 years in the industry before I became a software developer. It's a fascinating career choice for the technically-minded who don't want to be chained to a desk, though there is a minor percentage of desk work involved for field staff.

It's a career that has its challenges, particularly economically. Back when I was doing it, two to three man crews (but usually two-man) were typical. Now, with the advent of robotic total stations, low-cost GPS receivers, and laser imaging, one-man crews are more and more common. Also, similar to software engineering, there's a tendency for the viable career path to lead to management and office work if you become a licensed PLS. So in the same way it is difficult for a programmer/developer to keep working on producing code in his or her late career, it's similarly difficult for staff surveyors who got into the industry because they love field work to stay there.

As long as you understand these tradeoffs, surveying can be very rewarding work.

I'm a first year Surveying student, after I spent all of high school thinking I'd study computer science / software. I don't see much discussion of the topic on HN so I'm glad this is getting upvoted!

The opportunity of working outdoors appeals to me a lot, as does the technology (drones, remote sensing, GIS). It also seems like a much more relaxed job market than a more traditional tech / engineering job (albiet with less pay).

I'd love to hear any thoughts on the profession or suggestions for those early in their career.

Do you learn about the history of surveying as well? I'm super interested in how people surveyed the land for early bridges or for the purpose of cartography.

I'm quite early in the course, so couldn't give you a good answer sadly.

The intro to surveying class had a very broad overview of the history- important technologies, discoveries, and figures.

There is a Surveying and Engineering Law class that I expect will contain a lot of historical cases. Otherwise, there are no specific classes, so any history will probably be dispersed throughout the degree.

Books are your friends. I used to use the down time (bad weather, equipment being moved out of the line of sight) to read surveying books that I kept in the truck. Also, it's to your advantage to brush up on your trigonometry. You'll need it.

I started working on building sites, not as a full-time surveyor, but had to learn doing many of the typical surveying measurements, just around the time the "technical revolution" came, early 1980's.

#1 - laser (or whatever) distance meters, until then there were only Invar stadia rods and staffs [0]

#2 portable calculators (before the ubiquitous HP-11c, there was the HP-67 or 97, but right until then it was logarithms books and manual calculations)

Then, like only a few years later, I believe 1989 or 1990 came: #3 "real" total stations, with an actually working interface to computers, that changed once again the way we could work, much, much faster [1]

Still, it happened more than once to need (for one reason or the other, dead batteries, tools shipped for revisions, and similar) to need to do manual measurements and surely you need to have your basic trigonometry brushed up.

[0] here is an early Kern one, it costed (not the "full" E1 deopicted, only the DM503 + a "conventional" theodolite) at the time around 32 or 34 millions Lire, more or less like 2 years of a surveyor wage:

http://www.dehilster.info/geodetic_instruments/1984_kern_e1_...

[1] getting one of these at the time:

http://www.dehilster.info/geodetic_instruments/geodimeter_sy...

particularly the servo-operated version was a surveyor's dream, bordering with "sheer magic".

The HP-48x with a COGO card in the slot was a big advance for me; I learned on a Wild T3 theodolite, so advanced total stations with a data colletor such as the Leica were a big step up in productivity as well.

Yep, but the 48 came out a few years later, in the early '80's all we had were 67 and 97, then the 11C that was actually "portable" and with everlasting batteries, the "main" product at the time was the 41 but it was heavier and bulkier (and costed a lot more than the 11C, which was also nearly indestructible, I mean we had a couple of times wheel loaders passing on one of them and it came out only slightly bent in one of these incidents).

Right after the 41 and 11c, but before the 48 came the 28C (which also costed an arm and a leg, but I still have my beloved 28C in use, prefectly working, some thirty years later, so it wasn't such a bad investment ).

If you enjoy this topic, Ray Mears has a really good episode on Philip Turnor, who was a famous surveyor working for Hudson Bay Company and who is credited for creating maps of a large chunk of Canadian wilderness.

I searched YouTube for the Turnor episode but couldn't find it. Do you have a link to it?

I watched it at the time on bbc iplayer, I am not sure where it is available today.

edit: I believe it was a series called 'Northern Wilderness'

Ok, my memory failed me completely.

The surveyor was 'David Thompson', the episode is episode 5 of 6 of the 'Northern Wilderness' series.

The episode is named 'Koo Koo Sint' which was the name the indigenous people called 'David Thompson' which translates to 'the star gazer'.

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