United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. 



1807-1957 ' 



By Elliott B. Roberts 



Chief t Division of Geophysics 

 United States Coast and Geodetic Survey 



[With five" plates] 



When the Coast and Geodetic Survey opened its doors to business 

 on February 10, 1957, it became our Nation's first technical bureau 

 to celebrate a 150th birthday, and one of the few agencies besides 

 the Army, Navy, and other executive departments to reach such age. 

 An infant bureau of the early nineteenth century has grown into a 

 modern service responsible for much geographical exploration and 

 scientific and technological accomplishment. The birthday of this 

 service draws attention to its long history — one having many high- 

 lights of significance to the Navy. 



It is hard to believe that only 150 years ago the charts of our coastal 

 waters were so few and sketchy that navigation was uncertain and 

 dangerous — that our 60,000 coasting vessels had to endure heavy 

 losses each year because every move about the coast was an uncertain 

 adventure. Isolated sketch maps from the British Neptune, the in- 

 adequate notes of Captain Southack and of the British Pilot, and 

 the charts and sailing directions published by Blunt — all were in- 

 complete and full of errors. The country was essentially without 

 charts — of all instruments of navigation the most fundamental ! 



Thomas Jefferson and others, including members of the American 

 Philosophical Society, had long agitated for a Federal program of 

 hydrographic surveys. In 1807 Congress took care of the matter, in 

 effect ordering complete surveys of our waterways, by authorizing 

 the "Survey of the Coast," a new bureau to be assigned to the Treas- 

 ury Department. The fledgling agency, for which no precedent 

 existed, had a hard time getting started. After long delays, however, 

 under the ministrations of a scientific genius who antagonized and 



1 Reprinted by permission from the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 

 February 1957. 



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