Henry Arnold Karo

Karo was transferred from the Coast and Geodeic Survey to the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, when he was commanding officer of the Air Force Aeronautical Chart Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Initially, he was given the Army rank of major, and was promoted to colonel during this period, but he returned to the Coast and Geodetic Survey as with the rank of rear admiral (see photo caption) at the end of the war. ==US Coast and Geodetic Survey==

President Dwight Eisenhower named Rear Admiral Karo to succeed Rear Admiral Robert Francis Anthony Studds as Director of the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1955. From 1955 through 1965, Karo directed the Survey. In 1957, Karo oversaw an organization with a $10-million budget, 17 ships and 2,000 employees. In that same year, the Survey's publications list offered over 2,000 aerial and nautical maps and guides; and over 44 million of its documents were issued. Establishing the US standard mile Chester Nimitz signing the Japanese surrender document reads, "To Rear Admiral H. Arnold Karo, USC&GS -- with best wishes and great appreciation of the assistance of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in making possible the above scene." C.W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, U.S. Navy. A mile is a unit of length, usually used to measure distance; however, the measurement varied amongst a number of national systems. There were (and remain today) some slight differences depending on whether a mile is construed in terms of Imperial units, United States customary units, or Norwegian/Swedish mil. In the 1950s, Karo headed the project which established the U.S. survey mile (also known as U.S. statute mile) of 5,280 survey feet which is slightly longer at approximately 1,609.347 219 meters (1 international mile is exactly 0.999 998 survey mile). Karo was promoted to vice admiral just before he left the Coast and Geodetic Survey to help create a new government agency which would eventually merge the Survey with two other formerly independent agencies. ==Environmental Science Services Administration==

From 1965, until his retirement in 1967, he was the deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's predecessor agency, the Environmental Science Services Administration. ==Later years==

Karo died of respiratory failure at Georgetown University Hospital, in Washington, D.C. He was 82 years old. ==Commemoration==

The Society of American Military Engineers Karo Award – a NOAA Association decoration presented annually as a group award to a field unit of the National Ocean Service for an outstanding contribution in an engineering or scientific field – is named for Karo. ==Notes==