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Title: Drawing the Line : How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America
ISBN: 0471385026
Author:
Edwin Danson
Publicate Date: 2000-12-08
Publish: 2000-12-08
List Price: $24.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $15.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $8.55
Amazon Merchant Price: $19.96
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Requires Some Preparation or Concurrent Reading
I applaud the author's intent to bring this episode in engineering and science history to the limelight, but more information about geometric and astronomical concepts are required if this book is to be fully understood by even those in scientific and technical fields. But, having said that, there is far more good about this book than any failings in the details. Land surveying is much more than just geometry. As shown, there is a great deal of interpreting land descriptions (this hasn't changed at all since then!), heeding political sensitivities, and lots of very hard work. I recommend this book to anybody studying land surveying, cartography, geography (physical or social), or civil engineering. This book is mainly concerned with HOW boundaries are established. To understand about WHY boundaries are established in a particular location, see Andro Linklater's *The Fabric of America*
More on the fundamentals of applied astronomy would be helpful. The illustration depicting the length of a degree of latitude appears to be geometrically incorrect and very confusing (see my explanation in the discussion area below). A reader should consider reading some generalized geodesy references along this book. A publication titled: "NOAA Reprint of Basic Geodesy" is very helpful.
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2: Of historical and technical interest
Most people know next to nothing about this subject, including me. This little book resolves that problem for me.
It turns out to be pretty complicated, and the author does a good job of including that difficulty in this treatment.
I have an interest in surveying and I am impressed with the knowledge that was (and is) required to survey lands. And, all the math must be done by hand. Mason & Dixon had the required personalities for this tedium, and succeeded in their tasks. you will enjoy this book both as history and scientific explanation.
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3: a wee bit complicated but still worth it
First off, this book is very detailed and provides great insight to Mason and Dixon's journey of surveying the West line. There is an incredible amount of historical background (yay, I know I won't be failing history now! :-P ) and this is very good at providing the social and historical setting of that time period. Mathematically and scientifically, it was very complicated, but that's to be expected.
Second, Danson did a wonderful job and one of his reasons to writing this was probably to give readers the knowledge of what it was like back then and how two people can achieved such historical success.
So if you love history, or can at least stay awake half of the time during lectures, then this would be a good book. It's nothing like a traditional textbook. If you like math, especially trig, or astronomy, then this would definitely be your kind of book, too. Or, if you just want to impress people with your impeccable knowledge of how you know that the secret in measuring the differences in longitude between two locations is actually measuring the differences in time, then go ahead and give this book a try!
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4: Response to Ed Moorehead's review
Drawing the Line was written to appeal to a wide readership - complex astronomy and survey maths are deliberately excluded. Nevertheless it is very gratifying when someone has a go at checking something difficult. Ed Moorehead got `hung up' on the distance of one degree of latitude at the equator and pole. The book is correct - his understandable confusion arises due to the fact that the Earth is elliptical and not circular and the fact that `astronomical' verticals do not pass through the centre of the Earth.
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5: Response to Ed Moorehead's review
Drawing the Line was written to appeal to a wide readership - complex astronomy and survey maths are deliberately excluded. Nevertheless it is very gratifying when someone has a go at checking something difficult. Ed Moorehead got `hung up' on the distance of one degree of latitude at the equator and pole. The book is correct - his understandable confusion arises due to the fact that the Earth is elliptical and not circular and the fact that `astronomical' verticals do not pass through the centre of the Earth.
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