A History of American Surveying **Online Course**

Description

Author: David Balk, MBA

This course will trace the path of American surveying from its origins in Europe to the Colonies, highlighting the advances in surveying methods and instrumentation to meet the challenges of a new environment in the New World. We will discuss the surveying of the Mason-Dixon Line, the surveying of the boundary lines of Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York and Florida and the efforts of Andrew Ellicott, David Rittenhouse, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark and other surveyors.
As the country expanded westward, we’ll discuss how this growth and need for surveying the land was accommodated by the development of the Public Land Surveys System (PLSS) and how the passage of land ordinance laws standardized and increased the accuracy of surveying and mapping methods across the continent.