Horace Sydney Kendall Simpson, surveyor, passed the matriculation
examination of the University of the Cape of Good Hope in 1900, during the
Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). In 1905 he passed the university's Survey
Certificate Examination and soon thereafter was admitted as a land surveyor in
Natal Colony. A few years later he published a textbook on Practical land surveying: Notes compiled for survey students in South
Africa (Cape Town, 1908, 174 pp). He spent a large part of his subsequent
career in Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal. His life was mostly dedicated to furthering
the profession of land surveyor and he led an active public life which culminated
in his nomination as a senator. He was one of the foundation members of the
Institute of Land Surveyors of Natal in 1905, was elected as vice-president of
the Institute for the year 1923/4, served as a member of council to 1926, and
again as vice-president for 1926/7.
In the mid-1930's Simpson assisted H.E. Maasdorp in
measuring the Kaitob baseline as part of the geodetic work of the
Trigonometrical Survey. They used the British Ordnance Survey 'Macca' apparatus
and invar tapes suspended in catenary arcs. Simpson and J.H. Steere also measured
the Mtubatuba baseline. This was the last baseline measured with tapes before
the advent of electromagnetic distance measurement. Simpson described the work
in 'Report on Mtubatuba base measurements' (South
African Survey Journal, 1938, Vol. 5(35), pp. 51-58 and 1939, Vol. 5(37),
pp. 147-149).
Simpson practiced also as an architect. He was a member of
the South African Institute of Architects (from which he resigned around 1930)
and among others designed the Public Hall, Dundee, in 1922.
Simpson and his wife, Emilie Antionette Josephine Wynne,
whom he married in Durban in 1912, were the parents of the surveyor Kendall
Wynne Simpson and the geologist Eric Stanley Wynne Simpson.
