Gentlemen/ladies

You forever speak about "monuments". What, pray tell, is a "monument". I suspect it's a matter of semantics, of Americanese vs English, but still, what exactly is a "monument" ? In our subject specific context of course.

I think the term, as being used, is used as reference to a, susbtantally stable existing mark, which has existing coordinates applied to it.

. . . I think

I believe that we call a "monument" what you call a "beacon". It is a physical marker used to memorialize the position of a property corner or for horizontal control.

I hope this helps.

Mark

It's a stob. Ain't got nuthin to do with coords. There have been stobs for thousands of years, long before coords were invented.
I remember a little from college (maybe very little?) about the feller that invented coordinates. He came up with the idea from a fly crawling on a celing tile. Can't even remember who or when. They was stobs before there wuz celing tile, i reckon.
edit: A beacon, huh. Well that makes sense. A marker, like a light house ('cept maybe a little smaller)
Modified By J. T. Strickland on 4/5/2006 at 8:14 PM

there's wudd stobs, ahrn stobs, karnkreet stobs and I even seen plaskit stobs. I seen stobs made from them little alumalum toobs off'n tv aireeals, weldin rods, gun barrels, chair legs, fishin poles, kertun rodz, and a whole buncha othur stuff. And, ya no whut????? They's all still monuments!

I think our good friend Hennie has it all figured out by now.

Hey Hennie, I guess you've been following some of the really heated discussions here concerninig "Monuments and Coordinates"?

jd

A legal term which means any physical object used to mark something.

If I say that to a layperson I have to be careful because they think of a statue of a guy on a horse when they hear "monument."

A monument can be an iron pipe or steel rod driven into the ground, ie Survey marker.

The old timers used a stone or 4x4 wooden post.

Geodetic monuments are usually a 3.5" brass tablet set in concrete.

A jargon word Surveyors will use a lot is "control" like I need to check to see if there is any control at the jobsite. Control is just a name for survey monuments, stakes or markers.
Modified By David Karoly on 4/5/2006 at 9:17 PM

is another confusing word used to refer to a type survey monument. Whenever I see the word in print, or hear it spoken, it conjurs up visions of Charlton Heston, uhhh, I mean Moses throwing the 10 commandments off the mountain in his rage against the back sliding Israelites..... or maybe my first grade "Big Chief Tablet" :-)

Although my first grade year in school was monumental, the Big Chief Tablet was not. But, the round metal thingies that NGS (formerly USCGS) used to set into concrete for us to use in our surveys, are the same tablets David mentions, and do represent a type of survey monument. Stones are also used as monuments, although I don't know if the stone tablets that Moses broke could or would be used as survey monuments, even though they were classed as both "stone" and "tablets".


We do have a confusing language, don't we :-)

Modified By J.D. Billings on 4/5/2006 at 9:46 PM