COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY, United States. To all nations whose territory touches the sea or other water navigable to any extent, or who have any interests in the com merce of the sea, a full and complete lcnowledge of the coast—its nature and form, the charac ter of the sea bottom near it, the locatiort of reefs, shoals and other dangers to navigation, the direction and strength of currents and the character and amount of magnetic disturbance —is of the greatest moment. To supply this kriowledge the governments of all maritime na tions have in modern times executed surveys of their coasts by the most exact methods.
Some idea of the importance to this country of like operations and their extent may be formed when it is remembered that the coast line of the United States and Alaska, measured along its general trend, exceeds 10,000 miles in length. To represent the actual shore line as surveyed, which includes all the islands, bays, sounds and rivers in the littoral or tidal belt, these fignres would have -to be multiplied many times. To this must be added the shore line of Porto Rico, the Hawaiian Islands and the Phil ippine Islands. The length of the general shore hne of only 14 of the principal islands of the latter group exceeds 11,000 miles.
On the recommendation of President Thomas Jefferson, Congress in 1807 authorized the establishment, as a bureau under the Secre tary of the Treasury, of a national coast sur vey: For the purpose of furnishing geographic positions and ottAr data to State surveys, the scope of the bureau was in 1878 enlarged and its designation became the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. The superintenaents of the survey have been F. R. Hassler (1816-1.8, 1832-43) ; A. D. Bache (1843-67) ; Benjamin Pierce (1867-74) ; Carlile P. Patterson (1874 81) ; Julius E. Hilgard (1881-85) ; Frank M. Thorn (1885-89) • T. C. Mendenhall (1889 94) ; W. W. Mit:field *894-97) ; Henry L. Pritchett (1897-1900) • O. H. Tittmann (1900 15) • E. L. Jones (19'15--).
plan upon which it is organized is the outgrowth of trial and experience during the first 50 years of its existence and from its in ception almost every year has seen some new feature added or some old one discarded. Un
der the direction of a superintendent there are two great divisions of its work. They are the field and the office. The field work includes all of the practical operations of the survey on land and sea. Except in time of war, in ac cordance with the plan of reorganization of 1843, the work upon the land was divided be tween civilian assistants and officers of the army, the hydrographic parties being in charge of naval officers. Since 1861 no officers of the army have been connected with the survey and the conduct of the hydrographic work was about equally divided between the civilian as sistants and naval officers until 1898, when the naval officers were relieved, and since which time none have been assigned to the survey. The civilian assistants —now called hydro graphic and geodetic engineers—and aides consist of a body of trained experts perma nently attached to the survey and numbering about 152. The service owns a fleet of 15 steamers and one schooner, besides steam and motor launches. The office is that part of the establishment which receives the records, orig inal sheets, etc., representing the results of field work. They are registered and deposited in the archives until in turn they are taken up for examination, computation and adjustment, prepared for publication and finally published. Original charts are reduced or enlarged, en graved, electrotyped and printed. For the con venience of administration the operations of the main office at Washington are carried on by eight divisions, each havmg some specified portion of the general work to perform. In these divisions are employed clerks, draftsmen, computers, engravers, instrument makers, printers, etc., numbering in all about 191. There are sub-offices at San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Galveston and Manila.