Geodetic surveying in the United States began on February 10, 1807, when Congress created the Survey of the Coast during Thomas Jefferson's presidency, and as the nation expanded westward, surveys of the U.S. interior followed under an agency that later became part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Jasper Sherman Bilby, born near Rushville, Indiana, on July 16, 1864, joined the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey at age 20, became skilled in building wooden signal towers and reconnaissance, and after marrying Luella Cox in 1891 moved to Osgood, Indiana. In 1926, seeking a reusable and less costly replacement for wooden towers used in horizontal geodetic surveys, he designed a double tower of galvanized steel angle iron and rods, and in 1927 supervised construction of the first one. Its inner tower held the survey instruments while the separate outer tower held the observer, recorder, and lightkeeper, preventing vibrations from people moving and producing more accurate readings. Bilby wrote the original manual on the subject, rose to Chief Signalman, the highest civilian field position in the agency, was commended by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1927, and retired in 1937 after traveling 511,400 miles and measuring 47,950 miles of line. He died on July 18, 1949, and was buried in Indianapolis. The Bilby Tower's design saved the federal government more than three million dollars from 1927 to 1937, remained in use until 1984 when GPS made line-of-sight surveying unnecessary, and this example, found on Couba Island in the Barataria Wildlife Preserve south of New Orleans, had stood since 1972 through 18 hurricanes, was later used to observe migratory bird flight patterns, and was reconstructed in October 2013 as a memorial to Bilby.