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- U.S. Survey Foot vs. Meter
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If you are not working in metric you need to make absolutely sure you and everyone working on a survey's Mass State Plane coordinates are working in U.S survey feet and that conversion to and from metric is done correctly. Errors resulting from bad conversions are on the scale of about 2 meters in the Northampton area.
In 1959, the directors of the National Bureau of Standards and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey agreed on a redefinition of the inch-centimeter relationship. This redefinition defined 1 inch as equal to 2.54 centimeters, exactly, or 1 foot as equal to 0.3048 meters, exactly. However, their agreement stipulated that the older value for 1 meter equaling 39.37 inches, exactly, be retained for identifying the U.S. survey foot. The State Plane Coordinate Systems, which are derived from the national geodetic control network, are based on the relationship of 1 meter equaling 39.37 inches, exactly.