He is also credited with the invention of the station pointer, a navigational and survey tool used to plot the horizontal angle fixes made with a sextant onto charts.
[1] Born in Orkney and employed by the Royal Navy, he became the first person to accurately chart the coastline around North Ronaldsay where many vessels had come to grief.
He created a measured baseline and established station points along the shore to perform the triangulation equations for the survey.
[5] His 1774 Treatise on Maritime Surveying included the first use of the term station pointer, noting it as a new instrument and method rather than as Mackenzie's invention or tool.
[6] It was first used by his nephew, Lieutenant Murdoch Mackenzie, who succeeded his uncle as a surveyor to the Admiralty, and his assistant Graeme Spence in their surveys of the Thames Estuary.