MAKING ORDNANCE MAPS

Waipa Post, Volume 38, Issue 2269, 16 February 1929, Page 7

MAKING ORDNANCE MAPS

Sir Charles P. Close, president of the Royal Geographical Society, lecturing recently on “Some Aspects of t'he Work of Ordnance Survey,” paid a tribute to accuracy with which the first surveyors carried out their triangulations, considering the means and the nature of the instruments that were available. Subsequent verifications had revealed comparatively slight errors.

British ornance maps showed a mass of archaeological information which was not paralleled on 'the maps of any other country. On the British maps it was the custom to print t'he names of archaeological objects that were used locally, so that one found such names as Druids’ temple, altars, or circles, and so on, which merely showed the ignorance of the local inhabitants. In future such objects would be correctly described. Moreover, notes were now being made on the larger scale maps of achaeological discoveries such as bronze implements, neolithic axe heads, paleoliths, hoards of all ages, newly recognised barrows, old earthworks, site of Roman villas and Roman roads, and mediaeval remains. Objects later than 1688 were not indicated in special type. Photography from the air was revealing pit dwellings, signs of almost obliterated barrows, old tracks, Iron Age field divisions, and so on, which were unrecognisable on the ground. All this new information, when fully authenticated, would find its way on to the maps. In the domain of archaeology the Ordnance Survey had laid students under a debt of gratitude by the publication of a map of Roman Britain. This map gave a remarkable picture of the country in Roman times as ascertained by actual discoveries on the ground. It might be looked upon as an important undertaking that was launched at the International Geographical Congress at Cambridge in July, 1928, which was to prepare a map of the whole Roman Empire at the time of its greatest expansion. It was hoped that some of the sheets of this great map would be published before the next congress, which would probably be in September, 1931. Another international enterprise with which the Ordnance Survey was closely concerned was the international map of the world, otherwise La Carte du Monde au Millionieme. This project was being slowly carried out. Describing the work done by the survey in France when "the war assumed the character of a siege, Sir Charles said the maps of Belgium were good, but those of France left almost everything to be desired. This might have been intentional, for there was a well known axiom of Napoleon that a good map was a weapon of war. A special organisation had to be built up to prepare maps of the front, and during the progress of hostilities no fewer than 32,000,000 war maps were printed at Southampton. The work developed on fresh lines as the organising and carrying out of new devices of sound rangjng, flash spotting, and other means of assisting the artillery were evolved. The success of sound ranging was largely due to the presence in the field survey battalions of men who in civil life were distinguished men of science.