Survey Plays Vital Role in 'Atomic Age’

The first unit of the Survey in Menlo Park opened in 1953. The building was erected by a private developer in the Linfield Oaks administrative office area adjacent to Stanford Village and is being leased by the government. The second unit also is being built privately and also will be leased.

Although many of the laboratories in the Survey building literally are filled with rocks, the bureau has many other functions, too.

The Survey, an arm of the Department of Interior, is one of the least-publicized bureaus of the federal government. It is largely for this reason that its functions are rarely understood or appreciated by the public-at-large.

The Survey's job is closely tied with the future of America.

It keeps track of the nation’s minerals and water resources, and gathers data and supplies information about the conservation of these resources to interested public and private agencies. The Survey also draws the fantastically detailed topographic and geologic maps which are indispensable for such diversified needs as military defense planning or determing the best location for a television transmitter.

The topographic function of the Survey is now in the process of being moved to Menlo Park. The bureau needs large numbers of cartographic draftsmen to draw the maps on master sheets which are used in the printing operation.

The maps are prepared from aerial photographs which are projected by a device called a stereoplotter onto paper. This devise enables the technician to draw in the lines of equal elevation from which the topographic map is prepared.

It takes some three months to prepare a topographic map which covers only a few square miles of territory. The Geological Survey hopes eventually to map, in this way, every square inch of territory in the U.S.

"We still have a long way to go," says Osborne.

The Survey has taken on special importance during this atomic age.

Data prepared in the laboratories from rocks collected in the field furnishes clues to the location of uranium deposits.

The U.S. government does not participate in the hunt for uranium, but the Survey provides information to private groups and individuals who plan to seek the radioactive ore.

Scientists are constantly poring over rocks brought in from the field to determine their composition.

In one room, a technician grinds cross-sections of each rock to tissue-paper thickness, so thin that light can pass through the fragments. Scientists then can look at the rocks with a microscope, and find out what minerals they contain.

In another room, the rocks are ground with mechanical mortar and pestles to a fine powder. The powder is fed to a complex x-ray machine and the composition of the rocks is shown on graphs.

The information is filed away so that the Survey can build up its store of knowledge of the mineral resources for a given area.

The x-ray machine is one of many expensive devices used by the Survey. It is the need to use such high-cost machines which justifies centralizing the activities of the Survey, Osborne says.

"We need this equipment," he explains, "and it would not be economically feasible to buy them for scattered groups of scientists."

Of all the functions of the Survey, Osborne regards water conservation as possibly the most important.

"There is nothing I know of that is more critical in the Western states," he says. "We tend to take water for granted, yet the supply is not inexhaustible. Water will be a limiting factor in the years to come in the size of communities in this area. We just can’t keep throwing it away and still have enough."

The Survey does not campaign for water conservation, Osborne stresses. What it does is gather information and compile reports which are made available to interested local, state and federal agencies. The information is used in planning dams, irrigation canals and other water projects.

The Survey maintains a public inquiry office at 630 Sansome St., San Francisco. Among the services available there are copies of topographic maps which are sold for 25 cents each. The maps are always in heavy demand by hikers who want to plan the exact route of a pack trip.

"The maps are one of the biggest bargains you can find these days," says Osborne. "They cost only a quarter, the same as they did in the "30s."

Palo Alto Times
October 27, 1956

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