Ferdinand Rudolf Hassler
Left image: portrait of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, who served as the first superintendent of the United States Coast Survey.Right image: Ferdinand Hassler directing movement of a 300 pound surveying instrument which he designed and proudly called the Great Theodolite.
Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler was the first superintendent of the Coast Survey. He was born in 1770 in Aarau, Switzerland, and he immigrated to the United States, arriving at in 1805. Congress passed a measure to conduct a survey of the coast in 1807 and Hassler’s plan was selected.
Hassler proposed to build a geodetic triangulation network as a framework for both topographic surveys of the shoreline and hydrographic surveys of harbors and offshore waters. Although technologies have changed, NOAA surveyors and hydrographers have followed Hassler’s basic plan for the past two hundred years.
