(HP-65) Programmed Computations of Latitudes & Departures

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An excerpt from Surveying, © 1979, by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., ISBN 0-471-03132-1, pages 142-146

Figure 8-6 Programmable calculators. (Courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Co.)

8-7 Programmed Computations of Latitudes and Departures
  The calculation of latitudes and departures and subsequent balancing of surveys are done frequently. Any means of reducing the manual computations involved could amount to a large saving in time. Two such means will be presented in this section-one involving preprogrammed and programmable calculators and one involving the digital computer. There are a number of preprogrammed and programmable calculators on the market today. Some are designed for desk use; some are hand held and can be battery powered for portable use in the field. When using such a calculator with a preprogrammed surveying package, the procedure is mostly that of following program instructions. For demonstration purposes here, a Hewlett-Packard calculator (Model HP-65) with Surveying Pac 1 has been used. Technology is rapidly changing in the field of calculators; the HP-65 used here (because of its availability to the author) has already been superceded by the HP-97 and HP-67 (Figure 8-6). It must be emphasized that there are a number of such calculators on the market today, and without doubt new ones will come on the market in the future.

Example 8-5
Repeat Examples 8-1, 8-2, and 8-3 using the HP-65 calculator.

Solution
The procedure is to follow the instructions in the Surveying Pac 1.
three pages of the solution follows …

  The reader who first encounters the calculator solution of Example 8-5 may be initially overwhelmed by it. With a small amount of practice, however, one will become proficient at entering the data, punching the right buttons, and recording the pertinent answers in the proper sequence. The surveyor who can do this and who finds himself in the field in the middle of nowhere with no electricity and needing to compute closure on a traverse he has just completed, or needing to compute the bearing (or interior angle) required to complete the last line of a traverse, will appreciate a hand held, battery powered calculator that can do all of this quickly and accurately. To him, it must surely be ‘‘worth its weight in gold.”

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