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Fred Hebard wrote:
> I believe Paul Hirose posted a link to a very nice history of the
> coast survey a few years ago, explaining in detail how they went
> about their work.  I wonder if anybody has a link to that?

Try the NOAA history site:

http://www.history.noaa.gov/

Don't overlook the photo gallery.
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/historic/c&gs/index.html

It leads to a large collection of interesting images. One of my
favorites is this shot from the famous Pasadena Baseline project of
1923. A small house sits across the baseline, so the surveyors run their
Invar tape in one window and out the other as 3 children look on:
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/historic/c&gs/theb1661.htm

This covers the Coast Survey to 1867 in considerable depth:
http://www.lib.noaa.gov/edocs/CONTENTS.htm

Retired C&GS surveyor Joe Dracup has done an nice writeup of geodetic
surveys in the U.S. from 1807 to the 1990:
http://www.history.noaa.gov/stories_tales/geodetic1.html

Historic C&GS annual reports are online in the NOAA Library (choose from
the drop-down list). These reports are rather large PDFs.
http://www.lib.noaa.gov/

Also, there's a link to their historical chart and map collection on the
same page.

All those links can be reached from the first one I gave, but I
recommend creating a separate bookmark in your browser for anything
interesting you come across. Some of the routes to reach these things
are non-obvious, and you can go nuts a few months from now trying to
find that page you remember seeing. Take it from one who keeps learning
that the hard way!

   

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