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Show Story About Whistler's Father at How He Found Base Line for the Gigantic Gi-gantic Work of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. The scientific organization of the United States coast and geodetic survey, sur-vey, which has for its original and principal purpose a survey of the coasts of the United States primarily for the benefit of commerce, dates from 1832. Field work was begun the following year under the superintend-ency superintend-ency of Ferdinand R. Hassler, the celebrated cel-ebrated Swedish-American engineer, who for many years was at the head of this important work, and who, for two years, beginning in 1816, conducted conduct-ed coast survey operations in the vicinity vi-cinity of New York. But it is from 1832 that the present survey of our coasts really dates; and according to two authorities in the railway world It was due to a suggestion made by the father of Whistler, the artist, that a satisfactory base-line was found for the present survey, which has resulted re-sulted in the accurate mapping of our entire coast line, both east and west The story was originally told me years ago by the late James D. Layng. "You probably know that, in order to make a survey, it Is necessary, first of all, to fix upon a base line, or starting start-ing point." said Mr. Layng, at that time vice-president of the Big Four system. "Having got that, you can then measure with your Instruments the distance between the starting point and some prominent object a mountain, for example. Thus, you obtain ob-tain two sides of a triangle, and geometry geom-etry teaches us that if you know the length of two sides of a triangle you can at once find out what the length of the third side Is. When the coast survey had at last been scientiflcall organized and thus born anew, a party of engineers was sent out to find a convenient and good starting point for the survey that Is to say, a base line. They were engaged in this task for quite awhile a number of months, in fact and in the course of it they fell in with an old friend, Maj. George Washington Whistler, of the United States army, a distinguished engineer. " 'Come with me and I will show you what you want,' said Maj. Whistler, who constructed the first long railroad in the country, the Boston & Albany. They were willing, and the next day he took thOBe federal surveyors to a point on the Boston & Providence railroad then under course of construction con-struction near the town of Mansfield, Mass. He led them up the railroad track a little way and then pointed to the north. " 'There,' he said, 'is a stretch of railroad ten miles in length, by careful care-ful measurements absolutely straight, and with no grades. It ought to be the best kind of a base line for you.' "It didn't take the coast surveyors long to decide that Maj. Whistler was right They accepted that ten mile stretch as a starting point of their work and from it reached a point with their instruments some 60 mlleB away. The gigantic task of surveying the coast line of the entire country was at last under way on a scientific basis, thanks to a kindly and wise suggestion on the part of 'Jimmy' Whistler's father. fa-ther. And It may be interesting to note that the first measurement given by the surveyors' instruments was found afterwards by field measurement measure-ment to be so nearly correct that the deviation was only about two inchee In the 60 miles." (Copyright, 1910. by E. J. Edwards. Al! Rights Reserved.) |