okiesurveyor

My wife and I were talking about our grandpas the other day and how much change they must have seen in their lifetime. I thought about it and I believe the last 50 years may have given us more change than the 50 years before that 10 things I use every day that weren't around then: Zenith Space Commander 300 TV Remote GPS (Can you imagine telling a 20-something to read a map?) TV Remote control (My dad used to call his “Burk”) Intermittent windshield wipers. (Before this, they were either on or off) Smoke detectors (before these, people just died) Digital Cameras (you had to go to the drug store to see your pictures) Microwave (maybe if you were rich in 1975) Electronic payments /ATM’s (cash, what a novel idea) Cell Phones Personal Computers THE INTERNET (Probably the biggest game changer)

In some form or another, I have been asked this question more times than you think. So I want to take a minute to clarify a little about technology and Land Surveying. Gunters Chain and early compass Technology has been changing in the survey industry ever since the first transits were built. Even more so in the last 20 years than the 150 years prior to that. The profession of Land Surveying, however, has remained basically the same since the beginning of time. We locate and mark the boundaries of land. The technology involved in making those decisions is irrelevant. It is just a tool to measure distance and angles. I have heard people use technology as a “crutch” to say something like “the property corners moved because we can measure better today”. Property corners don’t move. When we are asked to locate the boundaries of a parcel of land, we have to consider the means of measurement that were in place at the time of the original survey. It’s what we call in our prof...