X-Nico

Coast Survey

The great naturalist John Muir was a guide and artist on “Survey of the 39th Parallel” across the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah.

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Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, who was eventually to become the agency’s first superintendent, went to England to collect scientific instruments and was unable to return through the duration of the War of 1812.

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Alexander Dallas Bache, great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was the second Coast Survey Superintendent.

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Coast Survey commissioned famed naturalist Louis Agassiz to conduct the first scientific study of the Florida reef system.

Julius Erasmus Hilgard

He, however, continued in charge of the Coast Survey office and in the performance of a great variety of scientific work until his appointment to the superintendency in 1881.

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This, together with miscellaneous field and scientific work, including a series of very elaborate experiments on the comparison of the standard bar of the base apparatus with the standard meter, occupied his time very closely up to the middle of the year 1860, when the necessary attention to his material interests led him to dissolve his official connection with the Coast Survey for a time, in order to engage in a prominent business enterprise at Paterson, New Jersey.

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The incident was soon followed up by Bache with an offer of subordinate position in the Coast Survey, in accepting which young Hilgard remarked that he would rather "do high work at low pay than low work at high pay."

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In 1875 he wrote a paper for the American Association for the Advancement of Science "On the Measurement of a Base Line for the Primary Triangulation of the United States Coast Survey near Atlanta, Georgia;" another for the Philosophical Society of Washington on "The Relation of the Legal Standards of Measure of the United States to those of Great Britain and France."

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He assisted in organizing an International Committee on Weights and Measures; made at London a comparison of the Coast Survey standard yard with the British Imperial standard, and also attended the annual session of the International Geodetic Association at Hamburg.

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His first practical employment was in the preliminary surveys of the Bear Mountain railroad, then a new enterprise, hut his mental activity in a higher sphere soon manifested itself in a communication to Mr. Bache, made in January, 1844, in which he called attention to errors in the formulas used in the Coast Survey in the computation of geographical positions, and gave his own development of correct formulas.

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In respect to his physical and consequent mental condition at the time when he appeared before the Presidential commission on the conduct of the Coast Survey, it may suffice to say that the physician who examined him immediately after his resignation declared that had he been aware of the facts he "would, unsolicited and from a sense of justice, have gone before that body and testified that Hilgard could not be held responsible for his acts."

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"In the summer of 1876, but without remitting in executive duties pertaining to the Coast Survey office, Mr. Hilgard acted as one of the judges on scientific and mechanical apparatus at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia.

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He returned to his duties at the Coast Survey office in November, 1872, and in the course of that year made a special determination of the length of the standard bar used in the measurement of the primary base line near Atlanta, Ga.

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After some summer field-work on the coast of New England, he returned in September to take charge of the computing department of the Coast Survey office, in which he continued through the years 1851-'52-'53.

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In June, 1878, he was detailed from his office- work for important duties requiring the presence of a representative of the Coast Survey in Europe.

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At the house of the latter he was first introduced to Professor Bache, who had not long before succeeded Hassler in the superinteudency of the United States Coast Survey and was a friend of Hilgard's maternal uncle, August Ritter von Pauli, of Munich, a distinguished engineer.

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Soon, however, Professor Bache, recognizing his abilities, procured young Hilgard a position in the Coast Survey, in which service he continued, with short interruptions, until his death.

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In 1855, while still continuing occasional field-work, he was put in charge of the publication of the records and results of the Coast Survey, in order to insure a steady progress in publication.

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During the failing health of Professor Bache, Hilgard, who was at that time in charge of the Coast Survey office, was obliged to perform the duties of Superintendent, which he did without extra compensation until the appointment of Benjamin Peirce to the position.

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In 1862 he assumed charge of the Coast Survey office, a position which during the war involved heavy responsibilities, which were soon aggravated by the beginning of the mental disease that incapacitated Mr. Bache for performance of the duties of Superintendent, and terminated in his death.

Charles E. Vreeland

He was then assigned briefly (from July to September 1889) with the Office of Naval Intelligence and reported to the Coast Survey late in October, a posting he took until the spring of 1893, when Vreeland was assigned a series of tours as naval attaché — first in Rome, Vienna and finally in Berlin.

Louis François de Pourtalès

He was a pupil of Louis Agassiz, whom he accompanied in 1840 on glacial expeditions in the Alps and in 1847 to the United States, where in 1848 he entered the government Coast Survey.