DOCSLIB.ORG

Geographical Work with the Army in France

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Geographical Work with the Army in France Geographical Work with the Army in France: Discussion Author(s): Major-General Franks, Colonel Hedley, Charles Close, Colonel Jack and Colonel Beazeley Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jul., 1919), pp. 23-28 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1780288 Accessed: 31-05-2016 21:57 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Tue, 31 May 2016 21:57:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms GEOGRAPHICAL WORK WITH THE ARMY IN FRANCE 23 there were instances of the location of hostile batteries on the unsupported testimony of the air photograph. Such are the outlines of our most interesting work at the Front. In conclusion I should like to add that the original and in valuable nucleus of regular officers and of trained surveyors from the Ordnance Survey gathered together over 4000 comrades of the new army, whose zeal and ability were one of the main factors in such success as we were able to obtain. Before the paper the President said: To-night is eminently a soldier's night, and the particular phase of geography with which we are to deal is military surveying, which may contribute to geography in many ways. In this hall there have been many lectures on the results of military surveys in far-off lands, in Africa and in Asia, where much geographical work has been done with the object of showing the generals in command for the first time where it is that they have to conduct their campaign. Such work often covers large areas and results in the only maps we possess. It must be something like forty years since I gave a lecture in this hall on the geographical results of an Afghan campaign. To-night the subject is somewhat different. Military surveying on a campaign has become specialized, as will reveal itself in the course of the lecture. Lieut.-Colonel Winterbotham then read the paper printed above^ and a discussion followed. The President : From the very interesting address which has been given us by Colonel Winterbotham you must have deduced this conclusion: that whatever may have been the deficiencies generally of many departments at the front?and there is no doubt that there were many-?the particular department which included the business of surveying proved to be both efflcient and useful. And for that efficiency and usefulness I have every reason to know that the Army is indebted very greatly to the energy and ability of the lecturer. A main object of this very highly specialized system of surveying was to locate the enemy's guns. It would be very interesting to know how far Colonel Winter? botham and his able assistants were successful in realizing the ideals which they set before them, and as we have here to-night Major-General Franks, the Inspector- General of Artillery, I will ask him to tell you precisely what he considers to have been the outcome of the system described by Colonel Winterbotham. Major-General Franks : I should like to say that for a very long time in France I was working in very close co-operation with Colonel Winterbotham who has given such an extremely interesting lecture. I, of course, saw the picture from the gunner's point of view?but we are still very good friends I I think, speaking as a gunner, it is hard to say really what we owe to the Royal Engineers and the Ordnance Survey in this war. There are not many gunners here to-night, or you would hear a very big round of applause. When we started out to war our methods were very different from what they are at present. Now-a-days we have long got away from the time when gunners fought with their guns in the open. You get your gun down in a hollow and hide it away, and the enemy does the same. In 1914 our methods were dis- tinctly primitive as compared with what they are now. The first job, as a rule, was to find the enemy gun, but the enemy very soon found that he had to hide This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Tue, 31 May 2016 21:57:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 24 GEOGRAPHICAL WORK WITH THE ARMY IN FRANCE his guns. One used to get little maps from the most enterprising and gallant airmen. The airman would fly over the battery and drop a sheet of paper on which was a little sketch, occasionally showing a cross-road, a hedge, a church, and an enemy battery marked in one corner. You took that, plotted it on to your own map, made out where you thought the enemy battery was, calculated the angles and range, found a church spire for an aiming point, and. started off. In the meantime the airman had gone back and was sitting over the enemy battery ready to tell you what happened, and correct your fire till you got it right on to the battery. Probably the first thing we found out was that the map was wrong, and that is what Colonel Winterbotham and the Royal Engineers have been putting right for us all through the war. When the map showed an enemy battery position 400 or 500 yards out, it was very difficult to hit it. Flash spotting, to which Colonel Winterbotham has referred, was one of the quite early developments. It was practically all done at night. I think flash spotting was first started down in the region of Bethune in 1915. We used to get up on the spoil heaps from the mines, with instruments for measuring angles and a rough telephone system, so that two operators a distance apart could try to get their instruments on to the same flash at the same time. And from those very rough beginnings in 1915 we got down to most perfect and marvellously accurate results before the end of the war. Those again were borne out by the sound-ranging, of which Colonel Winterbotham has also spoken, the results of which were absolutely astounding. You can all remember the great battle of Messines, which was rather a typical stereotyped battle of its kind. We were preparing some time for that battle, and one of the most important things we had to do was to locate every German gun and get it picketed or knocked out. There were hundreds of German guns in front of us, and between the air photographs, the Field Survey work, flash spotting at night, and sound ranging, we got on to the German guns and knocked them about so badly that they gave us very little trouble indeed during that battle. After the battle it was a very great pleasure to us to go and see our handiwork. We went over all those German battery positions and compared them with the records which had been worked out and mapped, for day by day during the battle fresh counter-battery maps were brought out, showing the positions as they shifted, and we found on comparing results with what we could see on the ground that we had got over 90 per cent. of the German guns absolutely accurately located. And what was most wonderful of all was that wherever there was a doubt about the position of a battery, in every ease the sound- rangers were right : they had beaten everybody in accuracy. There is one thing Colonel Winterbotham did not mention in regard to the mapping work that was done for us, and that was the marvellous barrage maps. Everybody knows what a barrage is, and in those old stereotyped battles of Arras, Vimy, Messines, and the battles of Flanders in 1917, the infantry advanced by regular steps of about 100 yards at a time under a barrage. For a big battle these barrage lines had to be arranged so that there were no gaps in them, otherwise German machine-guns would have escaped. We had to have barrage maps covering a front of some 10 or 15 miles, showing lifts of 100 or 200 yards every four minutes, we will say, for a period of several hours at a time. When the plans of 4he battle had been made the Artillery plans had to be made, the lifts of this enormously long line of guns covering a front of about 15 miles all had to be accurately mapped, and these maps produced and issued down to Platoon Commanders, so that every officer went into battle with a regular map in front of him of exactly what he had to do from zero hour This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Tue, 31 May 2016 21:57:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms GEOGRAPHICAL WORK WITH THE ARMY IN FRANCE 25 when the attack started until six or seven hours later when his job was finished.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Cartography and the Conception, Conquest and Control of Eastern Africa, 1844-1914
    Delineating Dominion: Cartography and the Conception, Conquest and Control of Eastern Africa, 1844-1914 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Robert H. Clemm Graduate Program in History The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: John F. Guilmartin, Advisor Alan Beyerchen Ousman Kobo Copyright by Robert H Clemm 2012 Abstract This dissertation documents the ways in which cartography was used during the Scramble for Africa to conceptualize, conquer and administer newly-won European colonies. By comparing the actions of two colonial powers, Germany and Britain, this study exposes how cartography was a constant in the colonial process. Using a three-tiered model of “gazes” (Discoverer, Despot, and Developer) maps are analyzed to show both the different purposes they were used for as well as the common appropriative power of the map. In doing so this study traces how cartography facilitated the colonial process of empire building from the beginnings of exploration to the administration of the colonies of German and British East Africa. During the period of exploration maps served to make the territory of Africa, previously unknown, legible to European audiences. Under the gaze of the Despot the map was used to legitimize the conquest of territory and add a permanence to the European colonies. Lastly, maps aided the capitalist development of the colonies as they were harnessed to make the land, and people, “useful.” Of special highlight is the ways in which maps were used in a similar manner by both private and state entities, suggesting a common understanding of the power of the map.
    [Show full text]
  • The Lost Ordnance Survey Two-Inch
    Sheetlines The journal of THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps “Unfinished business: the lost Ordnance Survey two- inch mapping of Scotland, 1819-1828 and 1852” Richard Oliver Sheetlines, 78 (April 2007), pp.9-31 Stable URL: http://www.charlesclosesociety.org/files/Issue78page9.pdf This article is provided for personal, non-commercial use only. Please contact the Society regarding any other use of this work. Published by THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps www.CharlesCloseSociety.org The Charles Close Society was founded in 1980 to bring together all those with an interest in the maps and history of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and its counterparts in the island of Ireland. The Society takes its name from Colonel Sir Charles Arden-Close, OS Director General from 1911 to 1922, and initiator of many of the maps now sought after by collectors. The Society publishes a wide range of books and booklets on historic OS map series and its journal, Sheetlines, is recognised internationally for its specialist articles on Ordnance Survey-related topics. 9 Unfinished business: the lost Ordnance Survey two-inch mapping of Scotland, 1819-1828 and 1852 Richard Oliver An obscure episode, and nothing to show for it It is perhaps understandable that maps that exist and can be seen tend to excite more general interest than those that do not, and that the Charles Close Society receives its support for studying what the Ordnance Survey has produced, rather than what is has not. Therefore the indulgence of at least some readers is craved for this exploration of two of the less-known episodes of OS history.
    [Show full text]
  • Coğrafya: Geçmiş-Kavramlar- Coğrafyacilar
    COĞRAFYA: GEÇMİŞ-KAVRAMLAR- COĞRAFYACILAR COĞRAFYA LİSANS PROGRAMI DR. ÖĞR. ÜYESİ ATİLLA KARATAŞ İSTANBUL ÜNİVERSİTESİ AÇIK VE UZAKTAN EĞİTİM FAKÜLTESİ Yazar Notu Elinizdeki bu eser, İstanbul Üniversitesi Açık ve Uzaktan Eğitim Fakültesi’nde okutulmak için hazırlanmış bir ders notu niteliğindedir. İSTANBUL ÜNİVERSİTESİ AÇIK VE UZAKTAN EĞİTİM FAKÜLTESİ COĞRAFYA LİSANS PROGRAMI COĞRAFYA: GEÇMİŞ-KAVRAMLAR- COĞRAFYACILAR Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Atilla KARATAŞ ÖNSÖZ İstanbul Üniversitesi Açık ve Uzaktan Eğitim Fakültesi Coğrafya programı kapsamında, Coğrafya: Geçmiş-Kavramlar-Coğrafyacılar dersi için hazırlanmış olan bu notlar, ders içeriğinin daha iyi anlaşılması amacıyla internet üzerinde erişime açık görsellerle zenginleştirilmiş ve “Ders Notu” formunda düzenlenmiştir. Bu sebeple kurallarına uygun olarak yapılmakla birlikte metin içerisindeki alıntılar için ilgili bölümlerde referans verilmemiş, ancak çalışmanın sonundaki “Kaynakça” bölümünde faydalanılan kaynaklara ait bilgiler sıralanmıştır. Bu çalışmaya konu olmuş bütün bilim insanlarını minnet ve şükranla yâd eder, muhtemel eksik ve hatalar için okuyucunun anlayışına muhtaç olduğumuzun ikrarını elzem addederim. Öğrencilerimiz ve Coğrafya bilimine gönül vermiş herkes için faydalı olması ümidiyle… Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Atilla KARATAŞ 20.07.2017 1 İÇİNDEKİLER ÖNSÖZ .............................................................................................................................................. 1 İÇİNDEKİLER .................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Sheetlines the Journal of the CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps
    Sheetlines The journal of THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps “Charles Frederick Arden-Close” anon Sheetlines, 2 (December 1981), pp.3-5 Stable URL: http://www.charlesclosesociety.org/files/Issue2page3.pdf This article is provided for personal, non-commercial use only. Please contact the Society regarding any other use of this work. Published by THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps www.CharlesCloseSociety.org The Charles Close Society was founded in 1980 to bring together all those with an interest in the maps and history of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and its counterparts in the island of Ireland. The Society takes its name from Colonel Sir Charles Arden-Close, OS Director General from 1911 to 1922, and initiator of many of the maps now sought after by collectors. The Society publishes a wide range of books and booklets on historic OS map series and its journal, Sheetlines, is recognised internationally for its specialist articles on Ordnance Survey-related topics. [Unsigned Article] CHARLES FREDERICK ARDEN-CLOSE 1865-1952 Colonel Sir Charles Arden-Close died 29 years ago, on 19th December 1952. For many of us today his name is kept alive principally by the republication of his book 'The early years of the Ordnance Survey' 1 of which it has been said that 'in writing these historical and individual notes, Close performed a service to the Ordnance Survey as well as to British geodesy and British surveyors'. In fact the book also provides more of a service to historians than Close could have realised at the time he wrote it.
    [Show full text]
  • The Making of a Legend
    The Making of a Legend Colonel Fawcett in Bolivia 2 Rob Hawke THE MAKING OF A LEGEND: COLONEL FAWCETT IN BOLIVIA CONTENTS Introduction 4 PART ONE (1867-1914) 1. Early Life 5 2. Pathway to Adventure 6 3. Lawless Frontiers 7 4. A Lost World 18 5. An International Incident 24 6. In Search of Lost Cities 31 PART TWO (1915-1925 and Beyond) 7. The Final Curtain 36 8. Living Legend 38 9. Conclusions 41 APPENDIX 44 BIBLIOGRAPHY 45 PHOTO INDEX 46 3 “The jungle… it knows the secret of our fate. It makes no sign.” HM.Tomlinson, The Sea and the Jungle The original map for Exploration Fawcett, edited by Brian Fawcett 4 Introduction When the English Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett failed to return from his 1925 expedition into the unexplored forests of the Brazilian interior, he vanished into the realm of legend. Fawcett was looking to make contact with a lost civilisation of highly advanced American Indians. The uncertainty of his fate, even 77 years on, has led to a number of hypotheses, some fantastical, some mundane, yet all shrouded in mystery. It is therefore not the purpose of this study to speculate upon his fate. The body of work on Fawcett is wafer thin in comparison to other explorers who became heroic through dying, such as Scott and Franklin, though his story is hardly less remarkable. Subsequent writing about Fawcett has naturally tended to focus on his disappearance, with little attention paid to his long and distinguished career as an explorer in Bolivia, which will provide the main focus of this study.
    [Show full text]
  • Brigadier EM Jack, CB
    No. 4273 September 22, 1951 NATURE 495 Born on April 27, 1882, at Wimbledon, Agar pa,ised work of others, Agar played an important part in from his preparatory school to Sedbergh and then substantiating the view that environmental or to King's College, Cambridge, where his tutor w&S 'acquired' characters are not inherited and are S. F. Harmer. He went through the regular courses therefore not available for the process of racial of instruction for the Natural Sciences Tripos, Parts I evolution. and II, in both of which he obtained a first cla,is. In its third phase, Agar's work diverged from the Of all his teachers he looked back with special realm of pure science, in which things are observed, gratitude to Harmer, for his inculcation of precise accurately recorded and when possible seriated into and orderly method, and to Bateson, then in the a general expression, into the realm of 'philosophy', flood tide of Mendelism, for turning his mind in the which deals rather with ide&S or opinions, and is free direction of his future research in genetics. from the constraints to which purely scientific I had been impressed by Agar as the most out­ research is subject. In this phase Agar was, above all, standing member of the Tripos class in zoology influenced by the philosophy of A. N. Whitehead­ during my last year as demonstrator ; so when he primarily a mathematician, not a biologist-as had completed his Tripos, I invited him to join the expounded in his "Process and Reality". According staff of the Zoology Department in the University of to this philosophy, reality consists not in substance Glasgow, on which he remained until 1920, holding but in process, and the difference between living and latterly the position of senior lecturer.
    [Show full text]
  • The New One-Inch and Quarter-Inch Maps of the Ordnance Survey: Discussion Author(S): Colonel Whitlock, Thomas Holdich, W
    The New One-Inch and Quarter-Inch Maps of the Ordnance Survey: Discussion Author(s): Colonel Whitlock, Thomas Holdich, W. J. Johnston, Coote Hedley, Major Mason, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Hinks, Edward Gleichen and W. Pitt Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Mar., 1920), pp. 196-200 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1781603 Accessed: 28-06-2016 01:27 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley, The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Tue, 28 Jun 2016 01:27:46 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 196 THE NEW ONE-INCH AND QUARTER-INCH MAPS This year two sheets of the new " Quarter-inch " have been published. This is an entirely new map prepared as follows : (i) The outline, water and contours were drawn on " blues" on the half-inch scale. (2) These were then photographed down to the quarter-inch scale. (3) From the negative a photo-etched copper plate was made of the three drawings?outline, water and contours.
    [Show full text]
  • How Shall Africa Be Mapped? French and British Responses to the Needs of Colonial Mapping
    CO-391 HOW SHALL AFRICA BE MAPPED? FRENCH AND BRITISH RESPONSES TO THE NEEDS OF COLONIAL MAPPING. COLLIER P. University of Portsmouth, PORTSMOUTH, UNITED KINGDOM INTRODUCTION Bartholomew (1890) in his survey of world mapping noted that of the 29.8 million square kilometres of Africa, detail survey covered only 518,000 square kilometres; topographic mapping about 1.14 million square kilometres; detailed route surveys about 5.9 million square kilometres and general maps about 12.4 million square kilometres, leaving 9.8 million square kilometres unexplored and unmapped by Europeans. It was clear to the European colonial powers that if Africa were to be administered and developed economically they would need to map their colonies Colonial mapping of Africa did not start with the partition of the continent into „spheres of influence‟ by European colonial powers at the Berlin Conference in 1884. France had been actively mapping in North Africa since the 1840s, and Britain had carried out some limited mapping in Southern Africa. On the other hand, Portugal, which had been in occupation of coastal strips for centuries, had not made any significant effort to map the territory under its control. The question was, however, how should the colonial powers go about mapping Africa? ADMINISTRATIVE ARRANGEMENTS As Jana Moser noted, in German South-West Africa mapping was largely carried out by commercial organisations such as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft für Südwestafrika and the Deutsche Diamanten- Gesellschaft (Moser 2005; 2006). Dietrich Reimer, a commercial publisher, issued complete coverage of German East Africa at 1:300,000. However, both France and Britain saw the responsibility for mapping as a function of the state.
    [Show full text]
  • Race–Russkoye
    2. Race as geographical populations. Individuals are part of a race that occupies or originated in spe- cifi c territories. An individual is in a race. 3. Modern genetics, with a focus on genetic distinc- R tiveness (however tiny) of groups of people. Maps that derive from race-based data sources such as Race, Maps and the Social Construction of. The the census have had to confront changing offi cial defi ni- cartographic construction of race refers to the concept tions, inclusions, and exclusions. Since the U.S. Census that maps and mapping actively create and reproduce was fi rst collected in 1790 the number and defi nition of race and racial knowledges. Although maps create many races has changed frequently (table 44). different knowledges, those that sustain or create race Racial identity had become more fractured in the are particularly important as they undergird projects as United States over time with just four categories in the diverse as colonialism, redlining, territorialization, and fi rst census and fi fteen by the end of the twentieth cen- indigeneity. tury. Conversely some categories have been dropped A racialized territory is a space that a particular race (Aleut, Eskimo, Hindu, Mulatto) in tune with chang- is thought to occupy. The idea that humans can be as- ing understandings of race and ethnicity. These changes signed to a small number of distinct populations was were often politically motivated. The superintendent of popularized by Carl von Linné (Linnæus), whose mid- the 1870 and 1880 U.S. Census, economist and statisti- eighteenth century Systema Naturæ (10th ed.) was cian Francis Amasa Walker, explicitly remodeled its data highly infl uential.
    [Show full text]
  • THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps
    Sheetlines The journal of THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps This edition of Sheetlines was published in 2013 and the articles may have been superseded by later research. Please check the index at http://www.charlesclosesociety.org/files/sheetlinesindex for most up-to-date references This article is provided for personal, non-commercial use only. Please contact the Society regarding any other use of this work. Published by THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps www.CharlesCloseSociety.org The Charles Close Society was founded in 1980 to bring together all those with an interest in the maps and history of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and its counterparts in the island of Ireland. The Society takes its name from Colonel Sir Charles Arden-Close, OS Director General from 1911 to 1922, and initiator of many of the maps now sought after by collectors. The Society publishes a wide range of books and booklets on historic OS map series and its journal, Sheetlines, is recognised internationally for its specialist articles on Ordnance Survey-related topics. Sheetlines The Journal of THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps Number 96 April 2013 Sheetlines Number 96 - April 2013 CCS news 1 Mapping the windmill - CCS latest book Richard Oliver 4 Exploring Explorer House John Davies 6 The use of Ordnance Survey data by commercial publishers – and some implications of the present situation John L Cruickshank 8 Ordnance Survey maps that changed the world Nina Morgan 14
    [Show full text]
  • Landscapes of Survey and the Material Cultures of the Early Ordnance Survey in Britain and Ireland
    Mapping the Nation: Landscapes of Survey and the Material Cultures of the Early Ordnance Survey in Britain and Ireland Lilley, K. D. (2018). Mapping the Nation: Landscapes of Survey and the Material Cultures of the Early Ordnance Survey in Britain and Ireland. Landscapes, 18(2), 178-199. https://doi.org/10.1080/14662035.2018.1429717 Published in: Landscapes Document Version: Peer reviewed version Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:01. Oct. 2021 Mapping the nation: landscapes of survey and the material cultures of the early Ordnance Survey in Britain and Ireland Keith D. Lilley1 School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen's University Belfast Abstract Starting its work in 1791, the Ordnance Survey (OS) was a supranational organisation responsible for creating high quality and accurate topographic maps of the nations of Great Britain and Ireland.
    [Show full text]
  • Sheetlines the Journal of the CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps
    Sheetlines The journal of THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps “A man for his time? Sir Charles Arden- Close 1865-1952” C I M O'Brien Sheetlines, 34 (September 1992), pp.1-9 Stable URL: http://www.charlesclosesociety.org/files/Issue34page1.pdf This article is provided for personal, non-commercial use only. Please contact the Society regarding any other use of this work. Published by THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps www.CharlesCloseSociety.org The Charles Close Society was founded in 1980 to bring together all those with an interest in the maps and history of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and its counterparts in the island of Ireland. The Society takes its name from Colonel Sir Charles Arden-Close, OS Director General from 1911 to 1922, and initiator of many of the maps now sought after by collectors. The Society publishes a wide range of books and booklets on historic OS map series and its journal, Sheetlines, is recognised internationally for its specialist articles on Ordnance Survey-related topics. A Man For His Time? Sir Charles Arden-Close 1865-1952 by C.I.M. O’Brien Five Superintendents, or Directors General, of the Ordnance Survey appear in the Dictionary of National Biography , William Mudge (as do two of his sons), Thomas Colby, Sir Henry James, Sir Charles Wilson and Sir Charles Arden-Close, the most recent DG to be honoured with a knighthood or the Fellowship of the Royal Society. Sir Charles took the additional name of ‘Arden’ late in life but he will be referred to here, throughout, as ‘Close’.
    [Show full text]