Mr. William Eimbeck for 35 years a highly distinguished officer in the Coast and Geodetic Survey, was stricken with paralysis and died on the same day at his residence in this city [Washington, D.C.].

As a geodesist his name is indelibly connected with the trigonometrical survey along the 39th Parallel of Latitude from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the great mountain stretch in this work extending from the Sierra Nevada mountains to Pike's Peak, having been completed by him. This involved a combination of Geodetic operations unparalleled in any country by reason of: the difficulties involved in their execution; the extent of high mountain work completed by him; the lengths of the lines in the figures; and the average elevations of the stations occupied.

One line in this scheme is 183 miles long, which exceeds the greatest line in the figure, which spanning the straits of Gibraltar, connects the triangulation of Europe and Africa, and which hitherto contained the longest line observed as part of a regular triangulation scheme.

Among the memorials to his ability as a student and investigator are his improvement on the Chronograph, his invariable Reversible Pendulum and the Duplex Base Apparatus designed for and constructed by the Coast and Geodetic Survey.

A life time of study and research added to charming natural eloquence and marked clarity in exposition made Mr. Eimbeck one of the most interesting and instructive of companions, these distinguished qualifications being set off by a modesty as extraordinary as the merits it failed to obscure. Broad and tolerant in his sympathies and with no thought of self in his generosity to the unfortunate, the life just closed is one that can justly claim only praise when it is referred to and affection when it is recalled.

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C&GS Bulletin, 4/17/1909