RECONNAISSANCE MAPPING FROM TRIMETROGON AIR PHOTOGRAPHS IN THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN

Abstract

Trimetrogon air surveys have been used extensively in the United States and Canada but seem to have had less favour on this side of the Atlantic in spite of the fact that large areas over here were photographed in this way during the last war. The Sudan is a very large country, but not a rich one; and up to the present it has not been able to undertake its own aerial photography. The gift of a very large number of American trimetrogon photographs covering half the country was therefore very welcome, and it seemed worth our while to see what could be done with them in spite of the known disadvantages of this type of photography for anything but small scale mapping. The methods of planimetric mapping from these photographs developed in the United States were expressly designed to be as simple as possible and to be capable of division into a number of easy tasks which could be performed by any educated person after a short course of training. Nevertheless we felt that they could be simplified a great deal more if the problem was approached from a different angle, particularly in view of the very high standard of flying which was apparent in the photographs covering the Sudan.