Surveying - History of Surveying

History of Surveying

Surveying techniques have existed throughout much of recorded history. In ancient Egypt, when the Nile River overflowed its banks and washed out farm boundaries, boundaries were re-established by a rope stretcher, or surveyor, through the application of simple geometry. The nearly perfect squareness and north-south orientation of the Great Pyramid of Giza, built c. 2700 BC, affirm the Egyptians' command of surveying.

A brief history of surveying:

• The Egyptian land register (3000 BC).
• A recent reassessment of Stonehenge (c. 2500 BC) suggests that the monument was set out by prehistoric surveyors using peg and rope geometry.
• The Groma surveying instrument originated in Mesopotamia (early 1st millennium BC).
• Under the Romans, land surveyors were established as a profession, and they established the basic measurements under which the Roman Empire was divided, such as a tax register of conquered lands (300 AD).
• The rise of the Caliphate led to extensive surveying throughout the Arab Empire. Arabic surveyors invented a variety of specialized instruments for surveying, including:
  • Instruments for accurate leveling: A wooden board with a plumb line and two hooks, an equilateral triangle with a plumb line and two hooks, and a reed level.
  • A rotating alhidade, used for accurate alignment.
  • A surveying astrolabe, used for alignment, measuring angles, triangulation, finding the width of a river, and the distance between two points separated by an impassable obstruction.
• In England, The Domesday Book by William the Conqueror (1086)
  • Covered all England
  • Contained names of the land owners, area, land quality, and specific information of the area's content and inhabitants.
  • Did not include maps showing exact locations.

In the 18th century in Europe triangulation was used to build a hierarchy of networks to allow point positioning within a country. Highest in the hierarchy were triangulation networks. These were densified into networks of traverses (polygons), into which local mapping surveying measurements, usually with measuring tape, corner prism and the familiar red and white poles, are tied. For example, in the late 1780s, a team from the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, originally under General William Roy began the Principal Triangulation of Britain using the specially built Ramsden theodolite. Large scale surveys are known as geodetic surveys.

• Continental Europe's cadastre was created in 1808
  • Founded by Napoleon I (Bonaparte)
  • Contained numbers of the parcels of land (or just land), land usage, names etc., and value of the land
  • 100 million parcels of land, triangle survey, measurable survey, map scale: 1:2500 and 1:1250
  • spread fast around Europe, but faced problems especially in Mediterranean countries, Balkan, and Eastern Europe due to cadastre upkeep costs and troubles.

A cadastre loses its value if register and maps are not constantly updated. Because of the fundamental value of land and real estate to the local and global economy, land surveying was one of the first professions to require Professional Licensure. In many jurisdictions, the land surveyors license was the first Professional Licensure issued by the state, province, or federal government.