Long before he delivered the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln had a brief career in surveying. He set out with a compass, stake ax, marking pins, and a Gunter’s chain to tackle government and private survey projects. Naturally, when he was employed in this centuries-old profession, the world was very different from today. While the lay of the land has changed over time, the basic principles of surveying have essentially remained the same. When Abraham Lincoln worked as a surveyor, he measured the form, boundaries, and position between two points of land, just as a surveyor would do today in the twenty-first century. Surveying tools, however, have changed drastically; and the emergence of technology and its rapid progression has transformed the way we survey the land. Read more about Surveying: from the Past into the Future
