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July 19, 2010

SNAPSHOT Meridian marker

By Joe Phelan jphelan@centralmaine.com
Staff Writer

Deputy Sheriff Mike Palenski, a court security officer, looks through the newly-installed Lexan box that protects but shows off the historic horizontal sundial and meridian marker on front lawn of the Kennebec County Court House in Augusta. The historic device had been hidden by a heavy, locked wood and metal box for many years.
Quoted in an August 2009 Kennebec Journal story when that box was removed and the marker was briefly uncovered last summer, Harold E. Nelson, senior geodesist at the Maine Department of Transportation's property office said the monument was built around 1870 and would have been used by local land surveyors to test their compasses against true north.
"Knowing the difference between true north and magnetic north was very important to surveyors, as well as sailors," Nelson said. "In Labrador, the difference is almost 90 degrees of arc (360 degrees in a circle). In Maine, currently there is about a 20 degree difference ... Deeds often will state whether the bearings are true or magnetic, and if magnetic, there are tables to convert to the bearings to their current value."

click image to enlarge

Staff photo by Joe Phelan

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