Charting Geodesy's Future Course

摘要

After 34 years of service as geodesist and Director of the National Geodetic Survey at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Dave Zilkoski retires with a sense of extraordinary accomplishment-geodesy has positioned itself as the foundation for all geospatial positioning. The road leading up to this feat has been marked by several important milestones. The most obvious is technology. When Zilkoski joined NGS in 1974, horizontal control was done with theodolites and Bilby towers, the "compensator" level was the "in-instrument" for levelling, and labor-intensive punch cards ruled data analysis. Then, gradually, automation swept in. The computer, unwieldy as it was in those early days, and NGS' web-based geodetic tool kit that came two decades later, banished the punch cards, a digital barcode level replaced the compensator level, GPS revolutionized horizontal and vertical positioning, and theodolites gave way to automated total stations in data collection. Those were the halcyon days of technology on the march-and geodetic surveying marched right along.