Metro Manual, a Hand Book for Engineers: Containing Technical Information Regarding the Construction, Adjustment and Use of Transits, Tachymeters, Theodolites, Alidades, Levels, Etc (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Metro Manual, a Hand Book for Engineers: Containing Technical Information Regarding the Construction, Adjustment and Use of Transits, Tachymeters, Theodolites, Alidades, Levels, Etc

Efficiency, as a distinct branch of contemporaneous activity, has its origin in the complexity of modern life, in the diminishing margin of natural resource and the relentless crusade against time wasted in unprofitable results. It demands honest effort, intelligent interpretation and a replacement of tradition with obviously better methods.

Greater refinement of method characterizes not only the larger engineering projects of to-day but dominates policy in the manufacture of the better grades of equipment. All logical enterprises meeting a natural demand have an upward tendency - a constant trend toward progress and evolution.

In the manufacture of Surveying Instruments, the problem of producing parts to pre-determined standards of accuracy is a matter of systematic insistence. Inferiority is the inevitable response to a demand for quantity in preference to quality, and precision instruments have never been manufactured upon the basis of lowest unit cost or maximum output.

All engineering work is founded upon an effort to utilize power, materials and equipment without preventable waste and to bring actual performance up to the level of an accepted standard of comparison. Such investigations require a critical study of the nature and source of error as well as logical conclusions as to their relative importance.

In linear measurement the origin and magnitude of errors are reasonably tangible quantities; but in angular measurement the effect of natural, instrumental and personal influences tends to modify accuracy. On the rational and commonly accepted assumption that the absolute value of an angle is never known, we can corollate the proposition that instrumental errors can be fairly compensated by the systematic process of reversion, repetition and equalization; but where the result is affected by personal inefficiency there is no ground for discussion.

On the other hand, the more confidence an engineer reposes in his own capabilities, the more critical and exacting he becomes concerning each inscrutable detail of construction for which the maker alone is responsible. The instinctive tendency in every high class man is toward higher class results, partially accomplished at least through the elimination of time or patience lost in unstable instruments.

To extend the boundaries of popular knowledge on this subject, to provide a ready reference in relation to instruments of our own manufacture and to give our customers the best there is in value and treatment without their insistence, is the excuse and necessity for the publication of this, the ninth, enlarged and revised edition of the Saegmuller Vest Pocket Handbook.

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