CHAPTER 7

Military Lines

How the Introduction of Contours Affected Maps and Movement

KAREN RANN

For nineteenth-century military men, the map was a powerful tool with which to plan campaigns. With a good map they could thwart the movements of enemies and enable the transportation of their own troops and provisions. Where a campaign met with success, land could be relabeled, apportioned, and appropriated with boundary lines redrawn. Traditionally, making maps required movement through terrain regardless of borders or boundary lines; an ideal had been for cadets to learn to both traverse and visualize land as would a hunter, before committing his vision to paper. A poor map could result in lost ground, defeat, and death. During the nineteenth century, a new technology would transform mapping and reinvent the visualization of terrain. This revolution in mapmaking is explored here through the maps of three military surveyors. Their descriptions of mapping processes throw light on both the advantages and issues that delayed the immediate adoption of a game-changing innovation: the contour line.

Contour lines delineate heights of equal elevation. They are a simple (if somewhat abstract) graphic convention used to convey the positions, heights, and gradients of hills on maps.1 Their adoption by the military for maps of fortifications was both swift and uncontentious. Less successful were their trials with contouring for reconnaissance mapping.

The reconnaissance map entailed cadets and officers envisaging land from above and transforming this conceived viewpoint—at speed and under threat of enemy fire—into lines on paper to facilitate the movement of battalions, provisions, and artillery. Prior to aerial photography, reconnaissance mapmaking required movement through potentially hostile terrain. More adept artist-soldiers painted vivid, pictorial renditions of hills and valleys for the map reader’s eye, but danger lurked within the allure of these deft results.2 Distortions in scale and inaccuracies for the positions, gradients, and altitude of hills risked the map reader and strategist being horribly—and in battle scenarios, fatally—deceived.3

During the early years of the nineteenth century, advances in the range and precision of artillery meant that armies could shoot, and be shot at, over greater distances. To increase commanders’ confidence in moving and positioning troops, military mapmakers sought ways to acquire and convey more accurate data for the positions, heights, and gradients of hills.4 The French had used contours for fortification projects as early as the 1760s,5 and by the mid-1840s contouring had come into regular use by the Ordnance Survey.6 Improvements in, and the standardization of measuring instruments enabled the production of more uniform results, whereas previously the military relied on individualistic pictorial interpretations made by artist-soldiers.7

Historically, military strategists viewed isolines as purveyors of truth, and earlier scholarship echoed this sentiment. The geographer and cartographer Arthur Robinson defined isolines as lines “that show by their absolute and relative positions the locations and gradients within a set of numbers.” Robinson espoused their use “because they can be produced by machine mapping methods,” portraying the location of “gradients, troughs, hills and valleys . . . [as] abstract geographical quantitative distributions.”8 Rarely employed early in the nineteenth century, by the end of that century their use was ubiquitous throughout Europe. As pictorial maps came to be seen as unreliable and subjective, so contoured maps appeared both more accurate and objective on paper. But isolines were not always truthful imparters of fact, particularly when—as with the last map discussed in this chapter—lines were drawn by eye and with unstandardized measurements.

Robinson portrayed cartography as objective science, a position contested by others writing on the power of maps, colonialism, isolines, and contours later in the twentieth century. By the 1980s, the perceived empirical objectivity of maps had been thoroughly dismantled; some scholars compared the study of maps to colonial acquisition practices, and others concluded that the power of (lines on) maps was “inherently political.”9 This work underscores the point that contour lines do not convey whether a hill is wooded, or a valley boggy. Like diagrams and charts, they are an abstraction, “a form of sampling: the space between two contour lines tells us nothing of the nature of the terrain.”10 All the same, historical military campaigns required cartographic assistance. As map historian J. H. Andrews noted: “By dehumanizing a landscape, maps make it easier for military commanders . . . when inflicting cruelty or hardship on the inhabitants of a mapped area.”11 According to historical geographer David Livingstone, isolines “convey every impression of impartiality and neutrality, and thereby inspire trust in their objectivity,” but went on to observe that through “the power of cartographic discourse [they] present as natural what is culturally constructed.”12 For their perceived objectivity and truthfulness isolines are appealing, but our trust in them is partially maintained through failing to dig below the surface and examine the processes used to determine them. The emotive subjectiveness of pictorial maps encouraged viewers to question their reliability, particularly when compared with the supposed scientific precision conjured by isoline and contour. From the 1850s, the Ordnance Survey used contour lines to structure pictorially drawn relief on their maps, acknowledging both the potential for improving precision and making maps easier to read at a glance. In Cartographic Relief Presentation, Eduard Imhof contrasted the visual utility of unsupported contours on large-scale maps (such as for fortifications) with the difficulties of making sense of them at smaller scales such as for an atlas. Imhof’s observations help us understand why many nineteenth-century military commanders argued against the adoption of contour lines for reconnaissance maps. A pictorial map painted a picture, whereas a contour map required patience to understand what occasionally appeared to be “formless confusions of lines.”13 The contoured map appeared objective and instilled a belief in its accuracy and trustworthiness. But with features omitted between the lines, contours present land as abstraction. They enable both a dispassionate viewing and the potential to dehumanize the land and its inhabitants.

Two issues dogged the military’s adoption of contour lines. First, for the contoured map to be trustworthy, accurate surveying was necessary—though not always feasible. Second, contours made it difficult to visualize the mapped landscape quickly. The first map in this chapter describes mapping options available to the military prior to contour lines, and the second two explore the functional advantages and disadvantages of contour lines on military maps. All three highlight how drawing different types of maps affected the movements of military mapmakers in the landscape. Military maps were unlikely to be printed, and few manuscript maps survive.14 However, those discussed here were printed in military publications and used to illustrate arguments for improved mapmaking practices.

The first mapmaker considered is Colonel Philip Bainbrigge (1786–1862). During the Peninsular War he drew Field Sketching before the Enemy on an intelligence gathering mission.15 Bainbrigge was trained to be attentive to salient features while moving through the landscape, to understand rudiments of geology, flora and fauna, and to confer with (or question) inhabitants. He sketched his reconnaissance map on horseback in two and a half hours. Speed was of the essence. He did not use contour lines; any precise drawing technique would have been considered almost impossible under the circumstances. He was pleased enough with the results—drawn directly into a sketchbook—to keep it. Thirty-four years later, it was printed in an article titled “Field Sketching,” appearing alongside a commentary on its making in a subsection “Sketching against time, and in the neighbourhood of the enemy.”16

The second map was for fortifications. Drawn by Henry Drury Harness (1804–1883), it was published in 1838 to illustrate a paper he wrote titled “On Contoured Plans and Defilade.”17 It clearly demonstrated the cutting-edge advantages contour lines conferred on defense plans and contrasts with the first and third maps in both scale and function. Harness’s depicts a small section of hillside below a wall of fortification. He drew contour lines at five-foot intervals to ascertain which areas were vulnerable to enemy observation or attack. Harness’s mapping process was aided by accurate surveying equipment, plentiful manpower, and time. His illustration and description displayed a solid theoretical comprehension of the advantages that isolines offered. From the mid-nineteenth century, diagrammatic isolines grew in popularity as compelling visual explicators of geographical data in atlases and on maps, yet the wholesale adoption of contour lines by the military was not assured. Part of the reason for this is demonstrated by the third map.

Illustrating a paper by Charles Edmund Webber (1838–1904), the third map was published in 1866, nearly thirty years after Harness’s map. Webber’s paper was part of a series on “Military Sketching” published between 1863 and 1874.18 All papers in the series were written to address the problem that “for the tactical operations of armies” there was “no uniform and systematic plan for expressing ground.”19 Like Harness’s map, the map that illustrated Webber’s arguments was contoured; however, as it was for reconnaissance (like Bainbrigge’s map), it was drawn with minimal instruments and using the body as a scale. A significant difference between the reconnaissance maps was that Bainbrigge’s was drawn during battle and Webber’s to train cadets. Also, the cadets learning to contour with Webber were not expected to map autonomously as Bainbrigge had done. Instead, they were required to systematically survey sample strips of land.20 Webber attempted to demonstrate the potential advantages of contours for reconnaissance purposes, yet his cadets’ slow pace left many in the military unconvinced. Comparison of the first and third maps is important because Webber himself compared them. The first map, made swiftly from the saddle, was prone to mistakes and the heights and gradients of hills could only be assessed in relation to each other. The introduction of contouring enabled mapmakers to convey heights and gradients more precisely, but still imperfectly, because cadets augmented the maps after surveying in ways that could introduce discrepancies.

As artillery became more powerful, military men desperately required the advances in mapmaking that could more accurately demonstrate height, shape, and gradient of terrain; as one officer noted, “What we expect to get from contours is, that knowledge of the ground, that accuracy in estimating slopes, which shall make the artillery officer right about his ranges.”21 Through the scrutiny and comparison of these three military men’s maps a picture emerges of relative functionality, including the ability to enable and thwart movement by the military and the potential to facilitate the domination of land through firepower over ever greater distances. Even by the century’s end, this process was incomplete.

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Maps did not miraculously materialize upon campaign tables; they required men to enter the field to survey and draw them. This section contextualizes the early conditions under which military men drew maps. In the 1790s, a “Corps of Royal Military Surveyors and Draftsmen” was formed. The creation of the corps heralded an acknowledgment that some uniformity and standardization of training would facilitate the making of military maps that were likely “to be employed on active service in the war with France.”22 At this time, drawing practice was as essential a component of a cadet’s training as the ability to clean a rifle or fire a cannon; it was a compulsory element of classroom training in all military schools.23 In the classroom, cadets learned to draw from models. A Treatise of the time recommended that “an officer, who wishes to be employed in reconnoitrings, should studiously apply himself to figure drawing, and particularly to the drawing of antique statues,” and he should “work after specimens of the most graceful and difficult outlines which it may be attempted to imitate.”24

Alongside classroom drawing, cadets trained outdoors to draw at speed and use the body as a measuring instrument, which was termed “sketching without instruments.”25 It required adjudging altitude and distance by eye, sometimes with a “pencil held at arms length,” or by pacing: counting steps, by foot or hoof.26 Timepieces, even a man’s pulse, were also made use of: “Slopes and declivities may be judged of by the greater or less time which it may take a man, or a horse . . . to ascend or descend them.”27 Military men on both sides of the Atlantic prized a style of speedy reconnoiter that required the ability to move through, and notice, the landscape as would a huntsman who is “everywhere at home,” or by applying to “wood-cutters, hunters, trappers and Indians, [as the best guides for] examining the face of the country.”28 Once attained, these skills were applied on forays into unknown and uncharted terrain, and to reconnoiter, read, and draw the landscape without becoming lost. Through an education of the eye, officers and cadets learned to memorize and draw territory while on the move; their sketches required a “kind of coup d’œil which arises from practice, and that acute discernment which the mere habit of seeing and observing give.”29 This teaching style was only suited to gifted cadets, and as the century progressed, military instructors sought more formulaic methods for teaching the accurate shading of heights and gradients in the landscape.

In 1812, George Gordon and J. H. Bedford Smith reflected in their Essay on Military Drawing, “It must be a subject of regret . . . that no uniform and defined method of expressing the inequalities of ground, has hitherto been adopted by the British Army.” They sought to define a series of rules “founded on incontrovertible principles, [that] admit of no variation” and argued that accurate data for gradient and altitude could avert dangers in the movement of troops and artillery.30 Their essay included a table that divided gradients into those shallow enough to “admit of Manœuvres,” those between 20 and 30 degrees to be “ascended and descended singly,” and finally, the steepest, which only “Chasseurs and Riflemen” could climb up.31 Prior to the adoption of contours, the question that vexed these and other writers was whether a pictorial drawing method for shading hills—a scale of shade—could be devised that would differentiate between gradients of 5 and 10 degrees.32

Another issue for military men was ascertaining and marking the heights of hill summits on maps. From 1801, a quick shorthand for “numbering hills in ascending order of height” came into use.33 Originally developed by the French, it was most likely introduced to military training institutions in England by General François Jarry (1733–1807).34 Called Relative Command, it entailed assessing the relative heights of summits in the field by eye. It enabled lines of sight to be quickly ascertained, so that for fortification works it was clear which “site dominated or commanded another.”35 It was an efficient shorthand that lacked precision. Of two hills marked with a 2, one might be much nearer a 3 in height, yet the system did not enable the map reader to distinguish between them. The digits added to hilltops related neither to feet nor meters (although it was later adapted by the Ordnance Survey to gauge measured heights).36 Initially the numbers merely indicated that a hill marked as a 3 was understood to be higher than one marked as 2.37 It was this system that Bainbrigge used on his reconnaissance map.

Bainbrigge’s map was published thirty-four years after its making, alongside his recollections of it, for an article on “Field Sketching.” He wrote that on July 21, 1812, in preparation for the battle of Salamanca, he stood beside the Duke of Wellington on high ground from which they could observe the French army crossing the river Tormes in the valley below.38 Bainbrigge recalled that the duke turned to him and requested he “cross the river, and see what sort of a position there was . . . for stopping the advance of the French, and to make a sketch of it as quickly as possible.”39 On fording the river, Bainbrigge sought out “the intersections of remarkable objects” and marked these upon his map using a pocket sextant and compass to triangulate between these and hilltops. He judged distances by pacing so as to show “All ground within cannon-shot (1,200 yards),” and numbered heights of hills by eye using Relative Command.40 His progress up some inclines was thwarted: “The rocks were so rugged I could not ride up,” he wrote.41 Riding within earshot of enemy skirmishers’ fire, he shaded the sketch with rough and rapid vertical strokes, closer and darker where the slopes were steeper. In the article that accompanied his published map, the advantages of horizontal strokes—that appear to resemble densely drawn contour lines—were discussed in a subsection titled “sketching at leisure.” However, the unidentified author went on to say that the “vertical mode” (that Bainbrigge had used) was “more easily understood in hasty sketches, where but little detail is admissible.”42

The rough vertically sketched strokes on Bainbrigge’s map were good enough for the duke to reposition his army so that the French initially withdrew theirs. Even though military topographer Charles Edmund Webber thought Bainbrigge was “probably the best topographer in the army” at that time, he was disparaging of the map.43 He thought Bainbrigge’s map was too small and hastily made to give Wellington accurate information about the terrain.44

However well or poorly the reconnaissance sketch had functioned for Wellington (he eventually won the battle), for Bainbrigge it became ingrained in his memory. Decades later he could recount precisely the route he followed and his intentions. As a gifted artist-soldier, this aliveness to place and immersion in the landscape resulted in a visually literate map. Yet the drawbacks were considerable. Bainbrigge’s techniques evoked the type of heroic endeavor that, in 1829, a military magazine urged “young officers” to guard against. It considered officers were “too apt to imbibe the implicit credence in the miraculous powers of the coup-d’œil, and to imagine that a pencil and paper, a quick eye, and a hand gallop, are the only instruments needed for ‘heaven-born genius.’”45 Heroics aside, to the military men who came after Bainbrigge, the role of the artist-soldier appeared outmoded. By the 1830s, the preference was already for more systematic, mechanistic surveying and drawing methods such as contouring.

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During the period that Arthur Robinson dubbed a “golden age” in “the development of geographic cartography” between 1835 and 1855, the British began to adopt French mapmaking techniques including contour lines.46 For fortification projects, contours were promoted by Henry Drury Harness as they gave more comprehensive information than traditional leveling lines. Leveling entailed the lengthy process of taking cross-sections of the rise and fall of the land along ruler-straight lines run through the terrain.47 These measurements only afforded a series of snapshots rather than a complete picture.

By the 1830s, the range and precision of armaments had improved dramatically. The British military now needed more comprehensive information about terrain than leveling could ever offer and sought out French innovations such as contouring.48 The French were ahead of the curve in the introduction of contour lines for military purposes.49 In 1749 Louis Milet de Mureau, a fortifications officer in the French army, developed a system of planes suspended one above the other by which he desired to demonstrate “the degree to which one fortification overlooked another.”50 Map historian Josef Konvitz considered his method a “first step toward the use of contour lines.” From the 1760s, students at Mézières (a famous school for military engineers) learned Mureau’s system. In the 1780s, Jean-Baptiste Meusnier de la Place (1754–1793) refined it by drawing lines on maps as “curves connecting points of equal value of elevation.”51 Then, circa 1801, a man described as “battalion commander Haxo” was said to have used contours at two-meter intervals for fortifications required by Napoleon in Italy.52 By 1809, Pierre-Antoine Clerc (1770–1843) was using contour lines extensively for fortifications projects for Napoleon.53 Clerc probably also taught Guillaume Henri Dufour (1787–1875).54 Dufour was a Swiss general who, from 1812, created what has been described as scientific contour line plans of fortifications on Corfu.55 It is clear that the French were drawing contour lines for fortification projects at the time of the Battle of Salamanca (in 1812), but as reconnaissance maps were less likely to be printed, there is no evidence of the French using them for this purpose at that time.

As an instructor in fortification at Woolwich Royal Military Academy, Henry Drury Harness taught contouring and advocated for cadets to study “French military authors.”56 He was said to possess a “strictly logical” mind, turned “chiefly in the direction of mathematical and cognate problems.”57 Rather than artistic drawing skills, he placed emphasis on what he termed “excellence in Mechanical Drawing.”58 In his 1838 paper “On Contoured Plans and Defilade,” Harness explained how contour lines—rather than leveling—could be applied practically in the field (See Figure 7.4). His paper explained how to apply contouring, through instrumental surveying, so that “the horizontal and vertical position of every point can then be at once discovered.”59 His written argument, however, was both densely detailed and ambiguous. He did not specify which measuring instruments he recommended (we must assume a theodolite) but covered in great detail how the men should hold pickets, move with leveling staffs, and signal to each other. He recommended a scale of 200 yards to an inch “with contours at vertical intervals of about 5 feet.”60 These intervals would enable a thorough assessment of “planes of fire” with the “consideration of the power of firearms of all kinds [which was] rendered necessary by the more powerful guns and small arms.”61 Harness promoted a standardized, methodological, and scientific approach to contouring that elevated the collection of data and statistics over individuality and art.

While Harness struggled to convey his ideas in words, his graphic visualizations were impressively farsighted. The planimetric accuracy and tactical advantages he conceived in the use of contour lines was innovatively adapted for an entirely different series of isolines for a civil project in statistical mapping. In 1837, the Irish Railway Commissioners invited him to develop a series of statistical maps to facilitate the “movement of people” across Ireland.62 Harness designed and delivered three maps: a passenger map “of remarkably modern appearance,” a traffic map, and a map “Showing by the varieties of shading the comparative Density of the Population.”63 Each map presented a wealth of statistical information in a visual format without precedent.64 To glance at Harness’s third map, the impression is of Ireland apportioned by contour lines that depict regions differentiated through shading. These regions, however, are not grouped by altitude—as a shaded contour map is. Instead, it appears he adapted the concept of contour lines and used their visual qualities to group together regions differentiated by population density. Harness never wrote up his novel methodology. After the famous cartographer Augustus Heinrich Petermann (1822–1878) saw Harness’s map, he deployed the concept for his own cartographic enterprises, wrote and published extensively on the subject, and came to be “erroneously credited with this innovation.”65

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Harness’s maps had proved that isolines were useful at vastly different scales, from siting fortifications to statistically mapping whole countries. Between the 1840s and 1870s, the question remained whether contouring—for reconnaissance surveys—could be achieved, and Webber took up this query. In Britain, contour lines appeared on Ordnance Survey (OS) maps from the 1840s. Yet some people argued that they were unreadable. In reports and parliamentary debates between 1846 and 1856, their adoption by the OS was discouraged.66 Those arguing for them recognized that contour lines alone “informed, at a glance, whether the access to any particular pass will be direct or circuitous in course, steep or easy in inclination.”67 Opponents claimed that “mechanical drawing systems” created visual obstacles for the uninitiated map reader; they risked creating “characterless,” “lifeless” maps of unreadable ugliness.68 By the end of the 1850s, though, contour lines were in regular use in Britain by both the OS and civil surveyors, who employed them to site industries, waterworks, roads, and railways.

Within what was called “the theatre for the tactical operations of armies” military men disagreed about the utility of contour lines; indeed, the problem was exacerbated as by the 1860s, there was still “no uniform and systematic plan for expressing ground.”69 Appearing in the same military journal that had previously published Harness’s work on contouring for fortifications were a series of papers for and against contours for reconnaissance purposes. As well as the papers, the journal also published a “Discussion” held at the War Office in May 1866, which was recorded verbatim.70

The papers published between 1863 and 1874 were either titled “Military Sketching” or “On the Representation of Ground.”71 The first of these, written by Henry Y. D. Scott, espoused the scientific merits of contour lines drawn in the field. Over twenty pages, plus nineteen full-page plates, Scott vented his frustration at staff officers, who have “had no training in the use of contours . . . [which] can alone give accuracy of work and certainty of reading.”72 Scott was convinced that contours could be drawn “with a minimum of equipment” in the field and that traditional vertical strokes (like Bainbrigge’s) were “unscientific” and drawn “according to the genius of the draftsman.”73 Subsequent papers presented alternative drawing methods, as well as various systems by which a man’s body could be used as a surveying instrument.74 These were written by E. R. James and Charles Edmund Webber.

Webber aired his concerns in two essays: “On the Representation of Ground, Especially in Military Reconnoissance” (1865) and “Military Sketching, Representation of Ground, &c” (1866). He denigrated the individualistic methods Bainbrigge had employed, arguing that “giving a rough idea of ground” was insufficient for the modern military to invade, occupy, or hold ground.75 Bainbrigge’s reliance on crude sketching and Relative Command had been flawed, producing a “pictorial effect” that was “most calculated to deceive the commander.”76 Webber recommended that instead a scale of shade should be “entirely based on a skeleton of contours,” proposing that “the scale of shade in the one case, and use of contours on the other, put the multitude on a par with the few.”77

To demonstrate his argument, Webber conceived a scenario whereby he took the place of Bainbrigge, all those years ago, to fulfill the Duke of Wellington’s request for a sketch. Webber thought Bainbrigge should not have worked alone. He deemed a party of sixteen men, and a further three hours, better suited to the mission. Webber described how he would have divided the ground and apportioned men to work in pairs. With minimal equipment, his men would pace to draw contours “to intervals of 75 feet, with intermediate ‘half-contours,’ or shaded to scale where necessary.” A priority was to ascertain the gradient of slopes, particularly “points of steepest inclination” in order to select “the safest parts” to position troops.78

Webber emphasized steps to be followed rather than taking initiative or independent thinking. In his first paper, he framed the argument for contour lines in terms of “the practicability of movement across an open or enclosed country, irrespective of routes,” that entailed a mode of sketching “calculated on the searching accuracy of rifled arms.”79 He thought Scott’s drawing method likely to “produce uniformity in results of the work of indifferent draughtsmen,” though considered his own method superior as it was faster to execute.80 Plate I, “Reconnoissance between Plumstead and Eltham,” from his second Essay, illustrated his system for using the body to produce contours (see Figure 7.5). He conceived of an average pace and height for men’s bodies by which “each step is so mechanical that any one could learn it in a short course of instruction.”81 Webber stressed the mechanical, replicable nature of his surveying and drawing methods. A year later, E. R. James agreed that “sketching must be strictly mechanical, and the sketcher need not necessarily be an artist.”82 Yet, rather than mapping under enemy fire, both he and Webber were employed as instructors in military academies and typically used models of hills to teach contour lines.

James argued that contour lines were too difficult for commanding generals to read, and too abstract.83 In 1866, he recommended that for “relief to the eye,” slopes should be given a “rounded appearance” and drawn “modified” by “what artists term the line of beauty, that is to say the ground at first falls easily, then rapidly, and lastly easily again.”84 It is as though he thought military officers would prefer idealized gradients on their maps, rather than what would actually confront them in the field! He couched his emphasis on “pictorial effect” as a compromise, a “means of agreement between the mechanical and artistic schools.”85 James was writing from a theoretical standpoint and for those who still desired soldiers to be artists.

Arguments over these papers took place during the “Discussion” chaired by Sir John Fox Burgoyne. During this, Webber railed at James’s pictorial rendering of contours, even accusing him of “basing his sketching on contour lines, without actually contouring.”86 More significantly, both Webber and James received further flak from Captain Marsh—another instructor in military surveying—for their standardization of men’s bodies. Marsh considered their “height of the eye” and pace ratios too arbitrary and stated, “We are not prepared to go into the field and suppose that our eyes are necessarily 5 feet 4 inches in height, or that our pace is necessarily 32 inches in length.”87 Both Webber and James built their arguments on theoretical practices; they had trained cadets at military establishments, rather than on active duty.

Webber chose a curious series of maps to illustrate his argument. They depicted ground in the vicinity of the Royal Military Academy divided into six strips that had been contoured by “mere beginners” under his instruction.88 The first plate showed all six strips; a second illustrated in detail “the mode of contouring while surveying one of the strips in plate I.”89 Yet a comparison of the two plates reveals that contours and shading do not match up. It looks as though the cadet, once returned to the classroom, doubted his original contouring of the hill and doctored his work.90 These discrepancies are of little consequence in the classroom but could have been disastrous for the movement of troops in the line of fire.91

Scott summed up the risk for a commander who relied on a sketched contour map: “Continuous contour lines in rough sketches . . . might lead to the supposition . . . that the sketcher felt more certainty in their truthfulness than his means of attaining accuracy justified.”92 Scott, Webber, James, and the other military men who took part in the “Discussion” were unable to reach a consensus on how best to depict relief on reconnaissance maps. Instructors in military drawing, such as Webber, based their ideas on what could be achieved in training, rather than on active duty. Their comprehension of what could be managed in the field, using the body to contour, was too optimistic and “unsuited to military sketches.”93 During proceedings, Captain Farrell found both James’s and Webber’s scales of shade “nothing more nor less than the multiplication of contours,” and concluding that contours were “a decided strain on the imaginative powers,” his preference was for the reconnaissance methods Bainbrigge had employed in 1812.94 “This scale of shade will destroy all freedom of hand,” he argued.95 In agreement, Colonel Simmons and Lieutenant Colonel Fisher thought most cadets were capable of more than “a simple, mechanical sketch” and could be relied upon to learn to draw faithful, pictorial maps.96 They thought mechanistic drawing methods minimized the active intelligence required of a cadet to choose for himself how to move and what to notice. It was not until 1880 that the War Office uniformly adopted contouring.97 And even then, their recommendation was that “the scale of shade [between contour lines] is only used indoors, and not much there, excepting when the sketcher is new to his work.”98

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Maps were considered “an indispensable item in war,” and the information they contained was essential for military leaders.99 In particular, the representation of relief was vital “to the tactical movement of armies.” In 1869 this was the view of Auguste Frédéric Lendy, treatise writer and director of a “Practical Military College.” The importance of military maps was undisputed; the issue had been how best to draw them. Lendy considered much “mischief [had been] done by the diversity of methods employed . . . for representing ground.”100

Early nineteenth-century maps created by soldier-artists, such as Bainbrigge, were vague in their descriptions of height and gradient, particularly when contrasted with the precision a uniform scale of shade—as applied to a contoured map—could impart. Bainbrigge’s reconnaissance sketch showed how numbering the relative heights of hills, coupled with speedy instinctive drawing (rather than a system) could convey enemy terrain. His sketch enabled his commander to picture the land before moving his troops. Once Bainbrigge had returned, Wellington could further question him on particulars such as which slopes might be too difficult for cavalry to traverse.

The contour lines proposed by Harness were designed for the defense of a position rather than reconnaissance. His fortification plans were intended to secure a position from which enemy attacks could be repelled. There was little dissension to using contour lines for fortification purposes, and compared with leveling—which required the same equipment—contours offered a more comprehensive overview of the height, volume, and gradients of every hill surveyed. Because speed was a less critical factor, and the sites for fortifications were generally smaller, military surveyors could draw contour lines with relative accuracy. Already in use by the French, from the 1830s onward the advantages of contour lines for fortifications became obvious to the British.

We do not know if Webber’s system was ever trialed on a battlefield. He expected cadets to labor mechanically, contouring narrow strips of terrain. This restricted their movements and did not permit them to build a comprehensive picture of enemy terrain. Another flaw connected with using the body for contouring was the (mis)perceived truthfulness of contours. Through their use on fortification plans, contour lines were associated with objective accuracy, yet contouring by eye—as Webber advocated—created lines that looked more accurate than they actually were. Neither Harness nor Webber thought that the military should rely on the artistic abilities of individuals. The trade-off was a loss of autonomy and freedom of initiative for surveyors.

The three military mapmakers discussed were selected because their views appeared in publications and because how they wrote about their maps could be compared with their illustrative examples. Each was passionate about the methods he used to draw his maps. Qualities such as accuracy, readability, and utility, contested then, can be debated anew now—particularly with regard to the advantages of contouring by eye that Webber advocated. Contouring with the body as instrument would never produce the same level of accuracy that measuring equipment such as theodolite and spirit level would. However, there were occasions when equipment—other than the body—remained unviable for reconnaissance, and it was advisable to have cadets trained for such instances. Even today, mountain leader courses teach students to “read contours” through their feet.101

Contour lines, unlike those for walls or barricades, are designed to be crossed as “they are but imaginary lines, that . . . have no natural existence.”102 They aid traversal of land without prescribing specific routes. Contour lines provided comprehensive information on gradients and height and facilitated the military to both build defenses and to move troops through hostile territory and across enemy lines. An advocate of contouring, writing in 1854, stated, “The system of contouring substitutes positive information for pictorial effect, and, once understood must convey the same general impression.”103 His words neatly summed up the contour map’s evolving ability to convey data precisely.

In the nineteenth century, both making a map and using it required bodies moving through terrain. In the twenty-first century, paper maps—with or without contour lines—have become an obsolete military technology. Printed contour maps are still produced for hikers; they enable anyone to imagine or plan forays—not limited to roads and paths, and which might cross boundary lines (as the military once did)—from the comfort of home. Through twentieth-century advances in aerial photography and satellite technology, and subsequently unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the twenty-first, there is no longer a requirement for mapmakers to be physically present in the terrain they are surveying. A military campaign can be “guided autonomously . . . [by UAVs that carry] offensive ordnance . . . to interfere with or destroy enemy targets. Unencumbered by crew.”104 It is a technology with the potential to take life and territory with alarming speed and precision. Once considered a cutting-edge technology, contour lines are now as useless to the military as the cannonballs they once guided. Now, military personnel may have a presence virtually anywhere. From the comfort of a control center they can cast an eye over villages and track across fields a continent away. Unlike Bainbrigge, moving physically through enemy terrain two centuries before, military presence on the ground now would never entail carrying a sketchbook. Instead, through possession of real-time live-feed and remotely controlled firepower, the military may now hold and conquer terrain, rewrite borders and boundary lines, and literally take the ground from under our feet.

Notes

1. 1.  I use the term “map” broadly, covering everything from reconnaissance sketches made under enemy fire to facilitate movement of troops; general surveys to identify areas prone to attack; and fortification plans designed to hinder enemy movement. A plan depicts a specific location, and a map generally covers a region. For simplicity, I use the term map to describe both reconnaissance sketches and plans. The contour line is a “line of equal altitude” within the larger category of isolines, or “the sets of lines . . . that show by their absolute and relative positions” depictions on paper that ranged “from temperatures and elevations to population densities.” Arthur H. Robinson, “The Genealogy of the Isopleth,” Cartographic Journal 8, no. 1 (1971): 49–53 (quote 49).
2. 2.  Yolande Jones, “Aspects of Relief Portrayal on 19th Century British Military Maps,” Cartographic Journal 11, no. 1 (1974): 19–33.
3. 3.  Charles Edmund Webber, “Military Sketching, Representation of Ground, &c.,” Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers, New Series Vol XV, (Woolwich: Jackson & Son, 1866), 37; Anon., “Correspondence,” The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine, Part I (Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 38–40.
4. 4.  Jones, “Aspects of Relief Portrayal,” 19–33. This article has informed and inspired my arguments throughout.
5. 5.  Josef Konvitz, Cartography in France 1660–1848: Science, Engineering, and Statecraft (University of Chicago Press, 1987), 96–7.
6. 6.  Although the Ordnance Survey was an arm of the military, its role was separate. See W. A. Seymour, ed., A History of the Ordnance Survey (W. M. Dawson & Sons, 1980); Rachel Hewitt, Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey (Granta, 2011).
7. 7.  Jones, “Aspects of Relief Portrayal,” 20.
8. 8.  Robinson, “The Genealogy of the Isopleth,” 49, 50.
9. 9.  Jeremy W. Crampton, Mapping: A Critical Introduction, to Cartography and GIS (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 3–6 (the acquisition of maps); M. Dodge, R. Kitchen, and C. Perkins, eds., The Map Reader: Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation (John Wiley and Sons, 2011), 5 (quote). Much has been written on the power of maps. A small sample includes Denis Wood, The Power of Maps (Guilford Press, 1992); Peter Barber, Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art (British Library, 2010); Chris Perkins, “Cartography—Cultures of Mapping: Power in Practice,” Progress in Human Geography 28, no. 3 (2004): 381–91; Jeremy Black, “Government, State, and Cartography: Mapping, Power, and Politics in Europe, 1650–1800,” Cartographica 43, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 95–105.
10. 10.  Karen Rann, Horizontal Hills: A Creative Historical Geography of the Emergence of Contour Lines in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 2022), 19.
11. 11.  J. H. Andrews, “Introduction: Meaning, Knowledge, and Power in the Map Philosophy of J. B. Harley,” in The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, by J. B. Harley (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 1–32, esp. 24.
12. 12.  David N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (University of Chicago Press, 2003), 160.
13. 13.  Eduard Imhof, Cartographic Relief Presentation (De Gruyter, 1982), 157.
14. 14.  The National Archives in London, however, hold twenty-three MS maps made during the Peninsular War; see MR 1/167 and MPH 1/1010, TNA.
15. 15.  R. J. N., “Field Sketching,” in Aide-mémoire to the military sciences: framed from contributions of officers of the different services and edited by a Committee of the Corps of Royal Engineers, in Dublin, 1845–46, ed. G. G. Lewis, H. D. Jones, T. A. Larcom, and John Williams (London: John Weale, 1846), 1:534–8 and Plates XI, XII.
16. 16.  The essay consisted of four subsections: I. Notices of the Apprehension of Ground; II. Preliminary Arrangements and Instruments, &c. necessary; III. Sketching at leisure, and under no restriction from the neighbourhood of the enemy; IV. Sketching against time, and in the neighbourhood of the enemy.
17. 17.  Henry Drury Harness, “On Contoured Plans and Defilade,” in Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers (London: J. Barker, 1838), 2:75–90 and Plate 3.
18. 18.  Including Henry Y. D. Scott, “On the Representation of Ground” (1863); Webber, “II Military Sketching” (1866); E. H. James, “III Military Sketching” (1866); and J. A. Millar, “The Scale of Shade Simplified” (1874).
19. 19.  Henry Y. D. Scott, “On the Representation of Ground,” in Officers of the Royal Engineers, Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers (Woolwich: Jackson & Son, 1863), 12:144–64, esp. 144.
20. 20.  Webber, “II Military Sketching” (1866), 139–40 (“each step is so mechanical that any one could learn it in a short course of instruction”).
21. 21.  W. D. Marsh, in “VII. The Scale of Shade Simplified, by Capt J. A. Millar . . . Discussion on Ditto,” in Officers of the Royal Engineers, Papers on subjects connected with the Duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers (Jackson & Son, 1874), 22:162.
22. 22.  Seymour, A History of the Ordnance Survey, 48–49.
23. 23.  Jones, “Aspects of Relief Portrayal,” 19.
24. 24.  C. S. de Malortie, A Treatise on Topography, for both Civil and Military Purposes (T. Egerton, 1815), 2:198–99.
25. 25.  Alfred Wilks Drayson, Practical Military Surveying and Sketching, with the use of the compass and sextant, theodolite, mountain barometer, etc (Chapman & Hall, 1861), 77–84; William Paterson, Notes on Military Surveying and Reconnaissance, 6th ed. (Trübner and Co., 1882), 82.
26. 26.  Drayson, Practical Military Surveying and Sketching, 77–84.
27. 27.  Auguste Frédéric Lendy, A Practical Course of Military Surveying, including the Principles of Topographical Drawing (Atchley and Co., 1869), 31 (“If no watch is to be had, the time is obtained by counting the pulsations of an artery”); D. H. Mahan, A Treatise on Field Fortification containing instructions on the methods of laying out, constructing, defending, and attacking Intrenchments, with the general outlines also of the arrangement, the attack and defence of permanent fortifications, 3rd ed. (John Wiley, 1861), 134.
28. 28.  Malortie, A Treatise on Topography, 2:183 (first quotation); D. H. Mahan, A Treatise on Field Fortification, 132, his italics.
29. 29.  Malortie, A Treatise on Topography, 2:104. Coup-d’œil is to take in the scene with one glance (from French, “a stroke of the eye”).
30. 30.  George Ham. Gordon and J. H. Bedford Smith, An Essay on Military Drawing. From the German of Schienert (T. Egerton, 1812), i.
31. 31.  Gordon and Bedford Smith, An Essay on Military Drawing, 26.
32. 32.  William Siborn devised scales of light and shade to differentiate ground that “1. admits of manoeuvres 2. can be ascended and descended obliquely by light cavalry 3. rifleman and light infantry are most suitable . . . to be employed.” William Siborn, A Practical Treatise on Topographical Surveying and Drawing . . . (C. and J. Rivington, 1827), 80.
33. 33.  Jones, “Aspects of Relief Portrayal,” 23.
34. 34.  J. E. O. Screen, “Jarry, Francis (1733–1807), army officer and military educationist,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept. 23, 2004; accessed Aug. 9, 2022. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-14669. As well as Relative Command, it is likely Jarry introduced horizontal hachuring, and even contouring, to the British military training establishments he worked in.
35. 35.  Jones, “Aspects of Relief Portrayal,” 22–24; Royal Engineers, Aide-mémoire to the military sciences (London: Lockwood & Co., 1853), plate 12. Two pages reprinted from Colonel Bainbrigge’s sketchbook, drawn for the Duke of Wellington during the 1812 Peninsular War. They include Relative Command numbering from 1 to 5 for the hills.
36. 36.  Rann, Horizontal Hills, 129–32.
37. 37.  Jones, “Aspects of Relief Portrayal,” 22–24.
38. 38.  Salamanca is roughly halfway between Madrid in Spain and the Portuguese border.
39. 39.  R. J. N., “Field Sketching,” 536.
40. 40.  R. J. N., “Field Sketching,” 535.
41. 41.  R. J. N., “Field Sketching,” 537.
42. 42.  R. J. N., “Field Sketching,” 528.
43. 43.  Webber, “II Military Sketching” (1866), 37. Webber drew the third map that this chapter considers, so it is interesting that he considered Bainbrigge thus because elsewhere in his article he pointed out many of the deficiencies in Bainbrigge’s 1812 map.
44. 44.  Webber, “II Military Sketching” (1866), 42. According to Webber, the sketch was “not large enough to describe the tactical points, the aids to defence, or the capabilities of the ground,” and (in a footnote on page 43) even the “relative command” numbers were wrong: “None here could tell by the drawing shown that the Bussaco ridge is 250 feet above that opposed to it.”
45. 45.  Anon, “Military Surveying,” in The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine, part 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1829), 340.
46. 46.  Arthur H. Robinson, “The 1837 Maps of Henry Drury Harness,” Geographical Journal 121, no. 4 (1955): 440–50 (quote 440).
47. 47.  In addition to the military’s use of leveling for fortifications, before contouring they were essential for deciding the routes of railway lines and canals.
48. 48.  “The French cartographic style was conveyed to England by men such as Isaac Landmann who had taught at the École Royale Militaire in Paris before becoming professor of artillery and fortification at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, from 1777 to 1816.” Rose Mitchell, “Contours of Conflict: The Highs and Lows of Military Mapping at the National Archives of the United Kingdom,” in History of Military Cartography, Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography, E. Liebenberg et al., eds. (Springer International Publishing, 2016), 394.
49. 49.  Konvitz, Cartography in France, 97. A plan of a fort was made using a contour method in 1761.
50. 50.  François de Dainville, “From the Depths to the Heights: Concerning the Marine Origins of the Cartographic Expression of Terrestrial Relief by Numbers and Contour Lines,” trans. Arthur H. Robinson and M. Carlier, Surveying and Mapping xxx, 3 (Sept. 1970): 398.
51. 51.  Konvitz, Cartography in France, 97. Though the lines Mureau drew were isobaths, on a hydrographic chart, rather than for fortifications.
52. 52.  Dainville, “From the Depths to the Heights,” 400.
53. 53.  Luisa Rossi, ed., Napoleone e il golfo della Spezia. Topografi francesi in Liguria tra il 1809 e il 1811 (Silvana Editoriale, 2008). Pierre-Antoine Clerc made contour maps of the Gulf of La Spezia, a military port within the French Empire.
54. 54.  John David Fenniman, “The Olsen-Bredsdorff Map and the Adoption of Contours for Relief Depiction on Atlas Maps in the Early Nineteenth Century” (Master’s diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1974), 33. Clerc “taught at the École Polytechnique and at the Ecole de Metz.” Dufour studied at both these institutions: at the Polytechnique in 1807, and Metz in 1809.
55. 55.  Fenniman, “The Olsen-Bredsdorff Map,” 33; Guillaume Henri Dufour, Plan general de la place et des forts de Corfou et du terrain extérieur à la distance d’environ deux kilomètres, MS map, 136 x 100cm, scale 1:5000 (1811–12). Original in the Dépôt de la guerre à Paris (BGE, fad e 105); image in Hans-Uli Feldmann and Hans-Peter Höhener, “Biographie Dufours,” Cartographica Helvetica, 54, (2017): 7 fig. 9, https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=chl-001:2017:0::12#9.
56. 56.  Harness to Denison, letter dated 1836, in Charles Edmund Webber, ed., General Sir Henry Drury Harness, K. C. B. Colonel Commandant Royal Engineers (Royal Engineers Institute Committee, 1903), 16–17, https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_gEIoAAAAYAAJ/page/n3/mode/2up, “a knowledge of French . . . would enable the cadet to study with perfect facility French military authors.”
57. 57.  Webber, General Sir Henry Drury Harness, 10.
58. 58.  Webber, General Sir Henry Drury Harness, 17.
59. 59.  Harness, “Contoured Plans and Defilade,” 75.
60. 60.  Harness, “Contoured Plans and Defilade,” 89–90.
61. 61.  Webber, General Sir Henry Drury Harness, 15.
62. 62.  “Second Report of the Irish Railway Commissioners,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London, volume 1 (September 1838): 257–77, https://archive.org/details/jstor-2337983/page/n1/mode/2up.
63. 63.  Robinson, “The 1837 Maps of Henry Drury Harness,” 442. The map is available online: UCD digital library, “Atlas to accompany second report of the Railway Commissioners Ireland,” https://digital.ucd.ie/view-media/ivrla:45724/canvas/ivrla:45728.
64. 64.  Robinson, “The 1837 Maps of Henry Drury Harness,” 447. Robinson stated, “To my knowledge nothing remotely like these maps preceded them.”
65. 65.  Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen (the annually produced journal for which Petermann served as editor); Robinson, “The 1837 Maps of Henry Drury Harness,” 449 (quote).
66. 66.  The reports were House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on Ordnance Survey (Ireland), 664, vol. xv. 1846; HC, Report from the Select Committee on Ordnance Survey (Scotland), 519, vol. x, July 10, 1851; HC, Report from the Select Committee on the Map of Ireland, 921, vol. xxxix, 1853; HC, Report from the Select Committee on Ordnance Survey of Scotland, 198, vol. xiv, May 6, 1856. Collated correspondence was published as Correspondence between the Treasury and the Board of Ordnance in 1852 and Correspondence Respecting the Scale of the Ordnance Survey and upon Contouring and Hill Delineation was collated and published in 1854. These debates centered on the scale and function of maps, though these issues impinged on whether contour lines were desired, or not.
67. 67.  W. J. Macquorn Rankine (Civil Engineer) in Correspondence Respecting the Scale of the Ordnance Survey and upon Contouring and Hill Delineation. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty (George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1854), 148.
68. 68.  Lewis D. B. Gordon in Correspondence Respecting the Scale of the Ordnance Survey and upon Contouring and Hill Delineation. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty (George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1854), 160, British Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons) online.
69. 69.  Henry Y. D. Scott, “On the Representation of Ground,” in Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers (W. P. Jackson, 1863), 12:144.
70. 70.  J. F. Burgoyne in the chair, “Discussion on papers II and III,” in Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers (Jackson & Son, 1866), 15:57–78. The papers by E. R. James and Charles Edmund Webber were read at this meeting.
71. 71.  The papers and discussion were printed in volumes of Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers in 1863, 1865, and 1866; as no consensus was reached, the journal printed three further papers on the subject in 1868, 1869, and 1874.
72. 72.  Scott, “On the Representation of Ground,” 145.
73. 73.  Scott, “On the Representation of Ground,” 155.
74. 74.  Burgoyne was also one of the Irish Railway Commissioners that employed Harness in 1837.
75. 75.  Webber, “II Military Sketching” (1866), 37.
76. 76.  Webber, “II Military Sketching” (1866), 44. All quotes. (His italics.)
77. 77.  Webber, “II Military Sketching” (1866), 34, 39.
78. 78.  Webber, “II Military Sketching” (1866), 42, 44.
79. 79.  Charles Edmund Webber, “On the Representation of Ground, especially in Military Reconnaissance,” in Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers, XIV (Woolwich: Jackson & Son, 1865) 14:137–47, esp. 137. (My italics.)
80. 80.  Webber, “On the Representation of Ground,” 138.
81. 81.  Webber, “On the Representation of Ground,” 139–140. (My italics.)
82. 82.  E. H. James, “III Military Sketching,” in Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the Corps of the Royal Engineers (Jackson & Son, 1866), 15:46.
83. 83.  James, “III Military Sketching,” 46.
84. 84.  James, “III Military Sketching,” 46. All quotes
85. 85.  James, “III Military Sketching,” 47.
86. 86.  Webber in “Discussion on papers II and III,” 76.
87. 87.  Marsh in “Discussion on papers II and III,” 68.
88. 88.  Webber, “II Military Sketching,” 41.
89. 89.  Webber, “II Military Sketching,” Plates I, V, and page 45, “Description of Plates.”
90. 90.  J. B. Harley and R. R. Oliver, The old series Ordnance Survey maps of England and Wales, scale: 1 inch to 1 mile (Harry Margary, 1991), 8:x. In the Ordnance Survey, the exaggeration of hachures between contour lines was a frequent mistake made by trainee draftsmen.
91. 91.  Webber, “II Military Sketching,” 45. In a footnote he acknowledged some issues with scale; the drawing was reduced by photography and “consequently the contours are not at intervals adopted.”
92. 92.  Scott, “On the Representation of Ground,” 157.
93. 93.  F. J. Hutchison and H. G. MacGregor, Military Sketching and Reconnaissance (C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1878), 34.
94. 94.  Farrell, in “Discussion on papers II and III,” 61 (both quotes). His stance is surprising as he introduces himself as previously working for “the contour department of the Ordnance Survey” (page 62).
95. 95.  Farrell, in “Discussion on papers II and III,” 63.
96. 96.  Fisher, in “Discussion on papers II and III,” 67.
97. 97.  Jones, “Aspects of Relief Portrayal,” 19.
98. 98.  War Office, “Ordnance Survey—processes of hill sketching,” in Report of Committee on TextBook, and System of Instruction for Military Sketching and Surveying etc. (Harrison and Son, 1880), 49. Quotation from W. St. George Burke. GBR/3296/Maps/CCSA.IM_509_1, Charles Close Society Archives, Cambridge University Map Library.
99. 99.  Lendy, A Practical Course of Military Surveying, 2.
100. 100.  Lendy, A Practical Course of Military Surveying, preface (no page number), 17.
101. 101.  Anna Fleming, “Skills for the Hills,” The Guardian, January 25, 2020, 9.
102. 102.  Farrell, in “Discussion on papers II and III,” 62.
103. 103.  Gordon, in Correspondence Respecting the Scale of the Ordnance Survey, 160.
104. 104.  John F. Guilmartin, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle: Military Aircraft,” Britannica.com, accessed May 19, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/technology/unmanned-aerial-vehicle.