In the UK the national mapping agency is called Ordnance Survey. The original purpose of which was for the military. The OS can trace its roots back to the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745 and the aftermath when King George II engaged engineer William Roy and artist Paul Sandby to produce a detailed military survey of the Highlands in 1745. They created a survey that was to a scale of 1 inch to 1000 yards and such was the success of this map that in 1790 the Board of Ordnance decided to do a complete military survey of the British Isles.
In 1791 a new invention became key to mapping and that was the Ramsden theodolite. The Board of Ordnance worked on mapping the south of England using the first surveys that had previously been done by William Roy as a guide. The first 1 inch to 1 mile map was published in 1801 which gave a detailed map of Kent in the South East of England, however this was a private commission which finished at the county's borders and it was not long afterwards that another map was published this time by the Board showing the counties of Essex and Kent without too much emphasis on the county borders. This lack of highlighting the borders was to become a characteristic of OS maps. It took around 20 years to map approximately one third of England and Wales and during 1819 Major Thomas Colby walked over 500 miles in 22 days during the survey. Major Colby then moved to Ireland in 1824 to survey the Emerald Isle and this was completed in 1846.
In 1841 with the boom in the railways, the Ordnance Survey Act came into force and this granted rights to enter properties for the purpose of surveying. Unfortunately, a fire at the Tower of London destroyed the Board's headquarters in 1841 which led to complete disarray for a number of years with disputes about what scale to use for mapping among other things. The Board of Ordnance relocated to Southampton and the first 25 inch to 1 mile survey was finished in 1895.
Continuing its military heritage, Ordnance Survey was involved in creating maps of France and the Low Countries during both World Wars and in fact during the Second World War, a map of Holland complete with details of German occupation areas was created and this was just the sort of information that was vital to the military.
The Davidson committee was set up in 1935 to consider the future of the OS and the then Director General, Major-General Malcolm MacLeod arranged for concrete trig points to be built on prominent hilltops throughout the entire United Kingdom. The purpose of these points was to create a constant location for theodolites to carry out accurate measurements. The final report by the Davidson Committee set the course for OS to move forward in the 20th century with the metre as the new unit of measurement. A trial map was introduced with a scale of 1:25000. As time and technology have advanced, so too has Ordnance Survey and in 1995 OS had digitised approximately 230,000 maps. The United Kingdom became the first country in the world to have such a large databank of electronic mapping. Ordnance Survey is no longer a military agency but still has government agency status.
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The world of maps is being changed by technology and this is changing the way we view the world. This short article provides you with a bit of history about how the Ordnance Survey in the UK started. See http://www.promap.co.uk
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