Said magnetometer also produced a paper trail with a built in printer
that "burned" characters across the specialized paper tape. I think it
had conductive particles in the paper and an electric spark formed the
readings which could also a serial port to "dump" the readings. From
Geonics (?) started I think by the famous pioneer high-speed
photographer Edgerton.

On the same site we employed a developing close-range photogrammetry
system by the German Rollei camera company, for rapid accident
recordation primarily, through a Canadian company Prometric
Technologies of Markham, Ont., which allows one to record 3
dimensional information from photographs that are later digitized to
create 3 dimensional drawings then in AutoCAD (or other dxf software)
later a stand alone package. It allows the info to be inserted in the
local coordinate system, from a series of camera angles. A video head
run by a small car battery was attached to a remote panhead on a large
tripod to take overhead angles. Each photo however, had to have a
general hand recording of tilt and angle orientation for the program
and a rough hand drawn map.

We also started the survey trying to use a Geonics EM38 resistivity
instrument in a small area "Designed to be particularly useful for
agricultural surveys measuring soil
salinity, the EM38 can cover large areas quickly without ground
electrodes..." and mapping that data, though without the data recorder
(which is what makes a "total station" total I think) it is tough to
read an analog sliding meter in a former foundry.

DIgital recordating should be easier now that some of the real
problems (non-standardized data ports, non graphic operating systems)
have been fixed.