I well remember working on a survey crew for an engineering company before
I was drafted, was an artillery surveyor in the Army and worked at it for a
while after I got out.  We used the old 100 foot chains that had to be hand
wraped and thrown like some modern vehicle windshied heat screens.  All
measurements under a foot were in 10ths or 100ths of a foot for ease of
calculation.  The stadia rods were also in feet and tenths since they were
used to plot both directions, distance, and height while making a plane
table and Alidade map.  It is pretty basic high school geometry and a lot
of fun.  One rocked the stadia rod back and forth while in a verticle plane
and read the lowest and highest reading on the upper and lower horizontal
hairs on the Alidade to give distance.  The distance was accurate to 1 foot
in a hundred.  Great for mapping large areas and moderately easy to make
accurate contour lines.  If one needed more accurate measurments, one just
simply chained out the distance.

Smoke.


Smoke (Michael A.) Pfeiffer, RPA
Ozark-St. Francis National Forests
605 West Main Street
Russellville, Arkansas 72801
(479) 968-2354  Ext. 233
e-mail:  [log in to unmask]

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.




                      Elizabeth Ragan
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                      Sent by:                 Subject: Measurements
                      HISTORICAL
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                      09/08/2003 02:09
                      PM
                      Please respond
                      to HISTORICAL
                      ARCHAEOLOGY






Okay, I'll ask: what is US Customary?  I've never heard of it before.
Most of my historical work in this country has been in decimal feet.

Cheers--

Elizabeth Ragan
(sorry for the truncated .sig, but it seems to be setting off antiviral
defenses in my listservs today)