In 1927, my grandfather, A. N. Brunson, was 22 years old and repairing surveying instruments. That was the year he established Brunson Instrument Company in the back room of a map business in downtown Kansas City. When the Great Depression came along, he was fortunate to keep very busy. Because no one could afford to buy new instruments, they came to him to repair their old ones.

My grandfather was a persistent thinker and inventor. He analyzed what went wrong with the instruments that came across his workbench. He was always thinking of ways to improve their design. During the drought of the 1930s, which produced the Dust Bowl in the south central United States, he observed how dust destroyed the main bearing systems of transits and levels. He knew there had to be a better way. This led him to his first patent—the “Brunson dustproof ball bearing spindle.” It became a hit and he started retrofitting this base on a lot of other manufacturers’ instruments.

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