Land surveying: A bibliography of sources

Surveying is one of the world's oldest professions. The Egyptians used a system of ropes and knots to relocate boundaries along the Nile after periodic flooding; they also used the plumb bob. The Babylonians are credited with dividing the circle into 360 degrees, and as early as 1600 BCE the Chinese were using a form of magnetic compass. In the second century BCE Greeks were using the astrolabe. There are numerous references in the Bible to surveying, such as, “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark” (Deuteronomy 27:17). Plane tables were used in Europe as early as the sixteenth century. Modern surveying is said to have begun in the late eighteenth century.