Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S.

Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S. The U.S. Coast Survey, authorized by Congress in 1807 to map and chart the country's coastline, is the oldest scientific institution of the federal government.After a decision in the 1870s to connect the surveys on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts by a triangulation across the continent, the official title became the Coast and Geodetic Survey. In 1970, after the establishment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the name was again changed to the National Ocean Survey. Twelve years later, it became the National Ocean Service. In 1991, a separate office within the Ocean Service of NOAA was retitled the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Finally, a 1994 reorganization of NOAA reestablished an office called the U.S. Coast Survey.

This government institution played an especially important role in the development of the United States during the period when Alexander Dallas Bache served as superintendent (1843–1867). Under Bache's command, the coast survey not only supported the country's dramatic economic and commercial growth but also became its preeminent scientific institution. Bache, the great‐grandson of Benjamin Franklin, utilized the survey's resources to promote scientific research and to influence or dominate other prominent institutions, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.

To perform the practical task of mapping with great exactness and precision, Bache's coast survey completed extensive scientific research, from astronomical and geophysical studies to observations of the Gulf Stream and studies of microscopic animals from the ocean bottom. Bache successfully mobilized popular support for the survey and convinced politicians that the scientific research was compatible with commercial interests.

Compared to other federal agencies encouraging science in the early and mid–nineteenth century, the coast survey had by far the largest budget. By the late 1850s, the expenditures had topped the half‐million‐dollar mark, a level of sponsorship not exceeded until the mid‐1880s by the U.S. Geological Survey. The coast survey under Bache also supported more scientists—either directly or indirectly, through his practice of employing consultants—than any other American institution. As the most prominent scientific institution in this period, the coast survey helped shape a geographical style for nineteenth‐century American science. One of the first scientist‐entrepreneurs in the United States, Bache helped to recast modern science from an individualistic enterprise to the highly structured social activities of contemporary “Big Science.”
See also Antebellum Era; Geological Surveys; Physical Sciences; Science: Revolutionary War to World War I.

Bibliography

Thomas G. Manning , U.S. Coast Survey vs. Naval Hydrographic Office: A Nineteenth‐Century Rivalry in Science and Politics, 1988.
Hugh Richard Slotten , Patronage, Practice, and the Culture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U.S. Coast Survey, 1994.

Hugh Richard Slotten