Many of our founding fathers started their careers as surveyors. Along with providing an essential service, surveying was a very profitable trade in eighteenth century America. Surveyors would purchase newly opened land from the Crown and sell tracts to settlers at higher prices. This led to some resentment and suspicion by settlers – but one surveyor remained popular throughout his surveying career – and beyond.

Did you know that the term “geodesy” was coined by Aristotle in about 350 BC? The term is derived from the Greek word ge, which means earth, and deo, which means to divide land. He created that name to differentiate it from the field of mathematics, called geometry in ancient Greek, (ge for “earth” and metry, meaning “to measure”). Essentially, geodesy means applied math.