The article deals with studying the historic design development of the eckers as landseparating tools, depending on the theoretical and practical matters of peasant land tenure, surveying forest areas, and those adjacent to the waters. The authors show that dividing lands of different practical use and establishing their boundaries is an important and necessary part of the land Fund state accounting, and its success depends on the qualified geodetic support possibilities. It is considered that the need to divide the land space can be traced in the laws of the knowledge development, performing geodetic works and improving the instruments’ design. As a result of the study, it was revealed that eckers make the only group of “earth-separating” tools; they are currently conventionally referred to as angle-measuring ones. Their main function is to divide space at fixed angles. The absence of a scale makes us think about their “non-measuring” purpose. The authors show that the features of the first “earth-separating” technical devices are basic for more complex designs of geodetic instruments, enabling to conduct diverse geodetic surveys in a certain historical era, depending on the application purpose and the tools using method.