Just saw this feature in the New York Times about the history of metrology in the US and some changes that will affect the work of surveyors and data conversion:

America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them.

For decades, U.S. metrologists have juggled two conflicting measurements for the foot. Henceforth, only one shall rule.

By Alanna Mitchell

New York Times, Aug. 18, 2020

How big is a foot? In the United States, that depends on which of the two official foot measurements you are talking about. If it comes as a surprise that there are two feet, how about this: One of those feet is about to go away.

The first foot is the old U.S. survey foot from 1893. The second is the newer, shorter and slightly more exact international foot from 1959, used by nearly everybody except surveyors in some states. The two feet differ by about one hundredth of a foot (0.12672 inches) per mile — that’s two feet for every million feet — an amount so small that it only adds up for people who measure over long distances.

Surveyors are such people. For more than six decades, they have been toggling between the two units, depending on what they are measuring and where....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/science/foot-surveying-metrology-dennis.html

[With graphics and cool illustrations]

Many of us probably know Andro Linklater's “Measuring America: How the United States Was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History.” It is both a readable discussion of metrology during the early years of the United States and a history of the rectangular survey, the Public Land Survey System. In the US, those two histories are closely intertwined. Linklater, a British historian, explains why that happened. The book is mentioned in the NYT article.  

--Heiko

Heiko Mühr

Map Metadata and Curatorial Specialist

Earth Sciences & Map Library
50 McCone Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000

[log in to unmask]

he/his/him