picture quiz

surveyor said:
Nice, looks like a fine example!
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I have ZERO training or experience with surveying.

I was able (w/ lots of time) to find 4 property pins 850 ft from the road pins; w/in ~ 2 ft ! ! !
Working alone ! ! !
Very nice instrument.

Certainly not like the current digital / laser instruments.
 
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I looked for an old transit, and was surprised how hard it was to find one. I get "collectable" ones like yours @GregManning - just a "utilitarian" one that might be 20-25 years old and no longer used because of newer technology.
 
When I started with Meg's company, They had me on the Zeiss Th-4 almost from the start, which was an optical vernier scale Theodolite which used a small attached mirror to illuminate the vernier. the crew used what was called a chain, but what was actually a steel tape the was taken up in a figure 8 sort of loop and then twisted (or thrown) into a relatively tight coil. I now work with my sons with a laser "total station". (which means it measures both angles and distances) and we recently had a closure of 1:165,000.
 
surveyor said:
When I started with Meg's company, They had me on the Zeiss Th-4 almost from the start, which was an optical vernier scale Theodolite which uoused a small attached mirror to illuminate the vernier. the crew used what was called a chain, but what was actually a absteel tape the was taken up in a figure 8 sort of loop and then twisted (or thrown) into a relatively tight coil. I now work with my sons with a laser "total station". (which means it measures both angles and distances) and we recently had a closure of 1:165,000.
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I have NO IDEA about what you just stated. ! ! !
 
surveyor said:
.... the crew used what was called a chain, but what was actually a steel tape the was taken up in a figure 8 sort of loop and then twisted (or thrown) into a relatively tight coil. ...
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that is what we did in forestry school. By no means were we trained surveyors, but taught "how to survey" and correct closures. More for line maintenance than legal line locations.

What is that metal tape chain called again? It definitely took touch to throw a chain.
 
The survey community continued to call the steel tapes "chains", but they typically were either 100' or 200' long, with leather thongs at the end to aid in grasping and pulling tension ( there was a special sort of wrench for gripping the tape at the rear end for the poor rear chainman, but most often he would just grasp the tape in his hand). The front end had an extra foot that was incremented in tenths and hundredths of a foot.

We might be more precise today, but that does not mean that we are necessarily more accurate in our boundary determination. (It is safe to say that corner monuments never match the record dimensions)
 
George Washington was a surveyor. Bring out in the wilds put him in the perfect place to find productive land and buy it.

Henry David Thoreau was too. He wrote about having clients hire him who asked him to do a ‘good’ survey which meant cheating. His position was to wirk accurately not to fudge corners.
 
Talk about frustration. On my first (sunny) day of work on the survey crew, the crew chief told me to "let out the chain" and handed me the coil of steel tape nicely tied up with the leather thongs. Having never let out a steel tape before I decided that the proper procedure must be to undo the thongs and cast the coil forth in front of my person. The resulting tangle of what was essentially 100' of spring steel was was impressive. You think a snarl of rope is a pain, think about that in steel (but no kinks allowed, as it would ruin the chain). Of course the crew could not work without the chain before being untangled first.
 
surveyor said:
We might be more precise today, but that does not mean that we are necessarily more accurate in our boundary determination. (It is safe to say that corner monuments never match the record dimensions)
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I later had one property line surveyed professionally due to a minor dispute.
The crew said that the original corner marker, (that I had found years ago) was actually 1 ft off correct position.
 
There are very few surveyors willing to work here.. There is a running joke which is accurate that many of the property lines were drawn in a bar, coupled with our terrain. Lidar maps look like a giant tiger took three swipes across the the island, from three different glaciers. That and we are basically a 65 mile long banana, less than a mile wide at the narrowest, and 5 miles at the widest.
That and 100'-300' cliffs or bluffs leading out into the sea, for some corner markers as some asshole in the state sold off the beach rights really screwing over the first nations folks
 
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