History of Engineering Surveying

Vernon Parrington, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Main Currents in American Thought, through extensive research found that the greatest handicap the American negro had through World War II was the lack of a history! This analogy with the modern surveyor's status should be obvious. The surveying discipline has the oldest and proudest history of all legal professions, but the surveyor has been relegated to the role of technician or craftsman in the minds of other professionals because of poor public relations, communications, and out‐of‐date ideas and information on the part of those professionals. A major misunderstanding as to the role of the engineering surveyor versus that of the land surveyor has evolved and has been carried on by both surveyors, with no background in engineering, and by engineers with little knowledge of engineering history or enough field experience to appreciate the role of the land surveyor. A study of the history of each branch of the surveying discipline should help clear up this misunderstanding. This paper traces the development of the engineering surveyor, his equipment and methods. The engineering surveyor, who evolved from the land surveyor, was the forerunner of all civil engineers, including the founders of the American Society of Civil Engineers.