Our Treasures: Whangārei Museum surveyor's theodolite example of finely crafted expert's tool 10 May, 2021 05:00 PM 5 minutes to read The Cooke, Troughton & Simms surveyor's level at Whangārei Museum. OUR TREASURES Most of us are used to seeing the odd surveyor out with their high-vis jackets and bright-yellow tripods, even if we don't really know how the surveying is actually done. Surveying and its optical tools have a long and fascinating history, which I won't attempt to address today. However, we will look at an example of a British mid-century surveyor's level, with a New Zealand connection, from our collection. The level consists of many specialist components such as a telescope, reflector mirror, various lenses, and other tiny sighting, levelling and measuring parts.