Thomas,
When I entered the biz in 1977, we used a tripod not much different than you see in the old photos. When I started my own firm, I bought one and used it extensively (although it had a bigger housing and looked more modern) until it got dropped and damaged beyond repair. I had to leave surveying to others or rent one for a day.
One big development was the Linker or Direct Read rod. Instead of having 0 feet at the bottom, which meant you had to do some math (Height of Instrument - Rod reading, or 100-7+ 93) to figure elevation, and you had a little survey book to write all that down. Then, they put 0 at the top, so you could direct read the elevation. If HI was 100, and you set the rod to 0 at HI, then what you read was the actual elevation. Then, you wrote it down in a book.
Most tripods had what was called a plane table. You set up 0 degrees back to the dogleg, and the degrees were written out on the table. To survey an existing (or proposed) point, you read the angle, taped the distance and read the rod, did the math. You could actually put paper down there on the plane table, but most times, we took it back to the office.
Sometime in the 1990's the Top Con system (and others) came into being. It spun on its tripod, sending out a laser beam, eliminating the guy over the rod. One person would walk around and raise the rod until it beeped, which recorded the grade at the station. That got downloaded on an office computer to make the topo map. If staking proposed, you still had to manually set the angle and tape the distance to a proposed green edge, etc., but making the map of existing topo got a lot easier.
There are several similar systems today. I haven't seen too many companies use it, but one system has the surveyor strap on a back pack with a unit, selects a point to stake, and walks around until it beeps, letting them know they are at the point they want to place a grade stake. For proposed staking, they have to load in an Auto Cad (or other vector based program) grading plan. The unit stores the proposed grade from input back at the office, and knows the existing grade from satellites. It even tells them the relative grade to the land, like " +4.2 feet and you can mark the stake with a yardstick or longer.
I love that system when in use. On many occasions, they can stake a tee or green in an hour by walking around. I come in, look, and can often tell immediately that grades can come down, or need to go up, etc. Contractors love it because it usually means the architect can approve grading before it happens, not look at it and come back in a few weeks and change that amount of bulldozer work.
One funny story, a contractor was using the system, but declined to pay for the premium satellite package (which supposedly included two Russian satellites, 11 all told, and the reading would measure and average out all of them. They only paid for a portion of that and we could tell immediately stakes were off by sometimes a hundred feet. They added to their subscription and voila, they were accurate the next time I came.
About ten years ago I saw the first laser level on bulldozer blades. Load similar topo info in and the dozer automatically sets blade levels to proposed grades with very little operator input (at least in the basic initial shaping, later of course, no one does it like a talented shaper)
Another odd story, when I started it was common to use steel measuring tapes. Apparently in the most critical applications, cloth tape found in common retractable measuring tapes was considered to stretch too much. Given all the free form in golf course building, I thought steel tape was not necessary, so I bucked convention and always used cloth tapes.