The Post Versalog Bamboo Slide Rule
From the Slide Rule to the Metaverse is going to be a series of articles that traces my surveying career using digital transformation as the glue. I hope this will bring back memories for many of you. I would love to hear about your digital transformation experiences.
My surveying career began at the age of 18 when my uncle connected me with a consultant whose firm had a inspection consulting contract with the New York State Thruway Authority for the construction of a new interchange in Coxsackie, New York. This is where I started by “pushing a rod” around a large clay borrow pit and up and over stone stockpiles in a quarry. Dick, the party chief was a savvy construction pro who taught me a lot, not just about surveying, but also the construction game – my first love in civil engineering.
Some 10 years later I spent a summer as the layout engineer for the US Army Corps Cold Region Ice Lab that was being built in Hanover, NH. That was a fun summer. I got an adult dose of the world of general and subcontractors while laying out the anchor bolts on a 200′ x 200′ foundation. I had a 100′ steel tape, plumb bob and 1 minute transit. The structural steel framework fit like a glove, but I am getting ahead of myself.
After getting my BS in Civil Engineering at WPI with a slide rule and my MS in CE at UCONN I got what I thought was my dream job. I was an engineer-in-training for the Federal Highway Administration. I lasted 6 months (which is an interesting story for another time) before taking a job as an Instructor in a Civil Tech program at UNH in 1975. That is where my digital transformation journey began. The head of the department had just acquired this HP desktop computer that was designed to be used for surveying calculations only. HP was the early leader in survey hardware and software for the average land surveyor.
A year or so later HP brought out the game changer. It was a low cost, electronic distance meter, or EDM. You set up the prism over one point and the EDM over the other and you had the slope distance. I purchased a Kern DM 501 distance meter and a K1SE theodolite soon after for $15,000. That was essentially the end of the 100′ steel tape, plumb bob and transit. The optics on that gun were incredible.
The TI 58 Surveying Computer
At the same time, Texas Instruments came out with the TI-58 which had a small card that could be used to load the needed surveying software. You could remove the battery and mount it to a tiny printer. It was less than $200. The only problem was when you turned off the computer you lost all your point data.
Check back next time for the next big breakthrough in From the Slide Rule to the Metaverse – the low cost electronic total station from Topcon.
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