Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 3.16.
A theodolite in action, ca. 1950. This
instrument attained an angular resolution of 0.2'',
which is equivalent to about 1 cm at 10 km. Put
another way, it could distinguish two adjacent dimes
from a distance of 6 miles. Inset: A CST-205 total
station, with 5'' angle read.
Thanks to Coastal Instrument
and Supply, Palm Bay, Florida, for permission to reproduce the
inset image.
surveying purposes. Total stations are used by archaeologists, crime scene
investigators, and miners, as well as by land surveyors.
Global Positioning System (GPS)
Historians now speak of the rapid and all-embracing spread of informa-
tion technology that has characterized the last quarter century or so as
the ''third Industrial Revolution.''
10
For me, two components of this latest
10. The first Industrial Revolution occurred in England, picking up pace from a slow
start in the middle of the eighteenth century and accelerating to its frenetic peak in the first
half of the nineteenth. The second Industrial Revolution took place in the rest of Europe
and the New World between about 1850 and 1920, and was characterized by a huge
increase in manufacturing industries (like the first) plus the electrical and chemical indus-
tries. The third revolution arose from the marriage of increasingly sophisticated computer
and communications technologies in the 1970s and 1980s.
