The Appearance of Contour Lines on British and Irish Maps, 1778-1870
The Appearance of Contour Lines on British and Irish Maps, 1778-1870
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英国和爱尔兰地图上等高线的出现，1778-1870 年
DOI：
10.1080/03085694.2020.1748935
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发表时间：
2020
期刊：
影响因子：
0.2
通讯作者：
Rann K
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Rann K
在英国和爱尔兰地图上采用等高线提出了“无法解决的问题”，这些问题几乎“至少在80年内无法克服”。[1] 1800年代等高线的先驱包括查尔斯·赫顿1778年的“等高线”，以及1880年代法国的杜卡拉和杜潘-特里尔的系统。2等高线（也称为“水平剖面”或“水平等值线”）与“阴影比例”、“相对命令”和“正常”系统以及影线技术等相互竞争的方法相竞争。所有这些系统都被用于军事设施，包括伍尔维奇和桑德赫斯特在英国整个19世纪。[3] 1827年，威廉·西博恩（William Siborn）在爱尔兰大力倡导等高线法，尽管他在5年前就反对使用等高线法。[4]到了19世纪40年代，托马斯·拉科姆（Thomas Larcom），一位热心提倡将它们用于野外的人，将它们带到了爱尔兰的蒙特乔伊的蚀刻室，用于奥伦斯测量（Orlando Survey，OS）的6英寸测量。[5]它们的使用也逐渐扩展到其他OS地图，但都是以零碎的方式进行的。19世纪50年代，议会地形调查特别委员会曾多次试图停止或限制它们的使用，而1846年至1856年期间，至少有四份议会报告阐述了支持或反对OS采用它们的论点。[6]英国军方花了更长的时间才就在地图上表示地形的最佳方法达成一致。在论文中，关于地形图和测量的教科书和说明，支持和反对“垂直和水平系统”和“水平和垂直山丘”的论点发挥了作用。[7]在19世纪早期，轮廓线大多被认为过于抽象和难以阅读，而“垂直”hachures-a流行的继承传统的图案molehill-被青睐为“自然”的方式来表示救济。[8]批评者认为，描述系统是不精确的：“地球地图向我们展示了山脉的位置，它们的弯曲，......没有说它们的高度。他们只给我们一个残缺不全的土地形象。[9]此外，“任何一个普通的绘图员都不可能做出可靠的（可重复的和统一的）作品”，这不仅仅是因为“这些方法在理论上非常巧妙，但在实际应用时，尤其是在实地应用时，最明显地失败了”。[10]相比之下，等高线代表了一种科学的、可重复的系统，它不依赖于艺术天赋，可以在战场上发挥作用，并带来军事优势：“我们希望从等高线中得到的是对地面的了解，对坡度的准确估计，这将使炮兵军官对他的射程保持正确。”[11]通过印刷表格来指导“阴影比例”和绘制等高线的规则，提高了可复制性和一致性，这些规则“原则上完全准确，实践中简单而不变”，等高线逐渐流行起来。12我的论文重点关注英国制图师在引入轮廓线时面临的美学判断以及概念和感知困难。[13]在这里，我的目标是重新创造一些材料挑战和美学判断，这些挑战和判断指导了关于如何表现浮雕的决定;书面材料由艺术再现和模型，地图和实验的[再]生产来补充。最后一个包括应用赫顿的数据来重建他丢失的1778年等高线图。[14]我与一位数学家合作，将赫顿的表格和图表转换成高程图，以支持他发表的高程图。在缺少信息的地方，他们做出了创造性的决定;这包括用尺子添加“相对高度相同的线”（作为对数学家赫顿的点头）。第15章重建过程中……
The adoption of contour lines on British and Irish maps presented ‘insoluble problems’ that were all but ‘insurmountable for at least eighty years’. 1 Precursors to the contour line of the 1800s included Charles Hutton’s 1778 ‘lines of equal altitude’and systems by Du Carla and Dupain-Triel in France from the 1780s. 2 Contour lines (known variously as ‘horizontal section’or ‘horizontal equivalents’) vied with competing methodologies such as ‘scale of shade’,‘relative command’and the ‘normal’system, as well as hachure techniques. All these systems were used at military establishments including Woolwich and Sandhurst in England throughout the 1800s. 3 Contouring was championed in Ireland in 1827 by William Siborn, despite his having argued against their use five years earlier. 4 By the 1840s, Thomas Larcom, an ardent advocate of their use in the field, brought them into the etching room at Mountjoy in Ireland, employing them for the Ordnance Survey (OS) 6-inch survey. 5 Their use spread to other OS maps, but in piecemeal fashion, and several attempts were made by Parliamentary Ordnance Survey Select Committees during the 1850s to halt or limit their use, while arguments for and against their adoption by the OS were played out in at least four parliamentary reports between 1846 and 1856. 6 The British military took still longer to agree on the best method for representing relief on maps. In treatises, textbooks and instructions on topographical drawing and surveying arguments for and against ‘vertical and horizontal systems’ and ‘horizontal and vertical hills’ played their part. 7 Whereas earlier in the 1800s, contour lines were mostly disparaged as too abstract and difficult to read,‘vertical’hachures—a popular successor to the traditional pictorial molehill—were favoured as the ‘natural’way to represent relief. 8 Critics argued that descriptive systems were imprecise:‘Terrestrial maps show us the site of the mountains, their sinuosities,… without saying anything of their height. They give us only a mutilated image of the land’. 9 Moreover ‘it is utterly impossible that any ordinary draughtsman can produce reliable [repeatable and uniform] work’, not least because ‘These methods are very ingenious in theory, but fail most signally when applied in practice, especially in the field’. 10 By contrast, contour lines represented a scientific, repeatable system that did not rely on artistic talent, could be effected in the field and gave a military advantage:‘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’. 11 Replicability and uniformity were improved by printed tables to guide ‘scales of shade’and rules for the drawing of contours which were ‘thoroughly accurate in principle, and simple and invariable in practice’, and gradually the contour prevailed. 12 My thesis focuses on the aesthetic judgements and the conceptual and perceptual difficulties that British cartographers faced as they introduced contour lines. 13 In this I aim to re-create some of the material challenges and aesthetic judgements that guided decisions about how to represent relief; written material is complemented by artistic re-enactment and [re] production of models, maps and experiments. The last include applyingHutton’s data to re-create his lost 1778 contour map. 14 Working with a mathematician, I converted Hutton’s tables and charts to give elevations to his published spot-height plan. Where information was missing, creative decisions were made; this included adding ‘lines of the same relative altitude’with a ruler (as a nod to Hutton the mathematician). 15 The re-creation process has …