SU Press Release

NOAA/Smithsonian Mapping Exhibit Comes to SU
Tuesday, June 26, 2007

SALISBURY, MD—Global positioning systems? Not in 1807.

That was the year President Thomas Jefferson recognized the need to chart the coastal waters as vital to the independence and prosperity of the economy and to the security of the then-fledgling United States.

Jefferson compelled Congress to pass an act establishing the Survey of the Coast, a predecessor agency of today’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the nation’s first scientific agency.Read more…