As these pictures show, surveying in the 17th century was very laborious:
Technical Marvels, Part 8: Historical Surveying Instruments – Communications of the ACM
Posted Oct 23 2024
see also:
List of 77 blog posts on the history of analog and digital computing, technology, automatons, robots, and scientific instruments (mathematics, astronomy, surveying, time measurement, mechanical looms) published by the Communication of the ACM, New York, 2017-2024,