Recent Acquisition:

Samuel Moore

An Accurate System of Surveying, 1796

This 1796 book has long been considered the first, totally American work on the practice of surveying. Its comparatively “late” publication date is somewhat surprising because of the obvious need for accurate surveying instruction, mainly because the development of colonial America was a pressing activity. It was a skill mastered by many Americans, not least of whom was George Washington.

Samuel Moore (1737?-1810) was born in colonial Connecticut and practiced surveying for over thirty years before writing An Accurate System of Surveying. He recounts his experience and desires for the book as follows:

Having pursued the business of practical surveying more than thirty years, long experience demonstrated the inaccuracy of the common methods of practice , and induced me to endeavor [sic] a correction thereof, and enlargement upon so important a subject. Many years close study produced what is now, in the following sheets [i.e. pages of the book], offered to the consideration of the candid reader. [p. v]

Most of the problems he addresses involve mathematics rather than field measurements, having been dissatisfied with relatively “crude,” but common practice of determining areas by plotting surveys on paper using triangulation.

Moore, Samuel. An Accurate System of Surveying. Litchfield [CT], Printed by T. Collier, 1796. Octavo half-sheets in 4s, xiii, 132 pp.