The New One-Inch and Quarter-Inch Maps of the Ordnance Survey

BEFORE proceeding to describe the new One-inch and Quarter-inch maps, it will not be out of place to give a short historical description of these two maps. The original i-inch maps of the Ordnance Survey were commenced in 1791, and the first sheet was published in 1801. They were engraved in large sheets from military surveys on various scales, part of the work being done by civilian surveyors under contract. The engraving was done in the Tower of London. These maps continued in this form for nearly seventy years, though several improvements were carried out. In the year 1872 an entirely new series of engraved maps was commenced, based on a new survey. The whole of the United Kingdom! was divided up into 695 sheets, and the series was known under the name of the Small Sheet Series of Great Britain and Ireland. The whole of the work?outline contours and hill hachures?was engraved on one plate. After a time it was found that when it became a question of revising the detail on the plates, the method of scraping the matrices involved the scraping of portions of the hill hachures. As these were permanent features and not subject to revision, it was considered that eventual economy in engraving (not to mention the possible deterioration of the hill work itself) would be effected by having the hill hachures on separate plates. This work was begun in 1894, and the published engraved sheets from that time took two forms : (i) outline, water and contours (in black); (ii) as above, with hachures (in brown). Until 1894 the Ordnance Survey had produced only maps in the engraved form, the point of view being that it was the duty of the survey to produce the best engraved article possible; a prejudice existed at this period against extending the work of the survey to lithography, and the attitude was that the survey was a map-producing rather than a mappublishing establishment. Of the excellence of the engraved maps there can be no question, but from a point of view of economy in production they cannot compare with maps produced by lithographic means. Each engraved impression required hand-inking and hand-printing. Moreover the method precluded the use of much colour. In 1892 the War Office pressed for additional information to be shown on the i-inch maps. This necessitated the adoption of lithographic methods. The engraved plates were used as a basis of the work, but it became necessary to separate the three features?outline, water, and con? tours?which up to now had been engraved together on the copper-plate

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