(204) 
general guidance, a compilation of recommended practices. If such a thing as 
an American consensus can be abstracted from the apparent diversity of opin 
ions, it has been already abstracted in these two documents. Since the afore 
mentioned documents were published only after extensive debates and a prac 
tically all-inclusive approval, and since they are a result of a „great compro 
mise”, it would be disastrous to disregrad them and to open the gates again to 
the conflicts and controversies which have already been reconciled. 
If the thesis that these documents represent the American consensus can 
be accepted, and I believe it would be illogical not to accept this thesis, the 
standardization dealings with photogrammetrists of this country could be 
simplified at least to the extent that a firm rule, hardly permitting any except 
ions, could be established, according to which any American suggestion con 
trary to the recent agreements expressed in these two documents would be 
almost automatically rejected, unless it pointed out an obvious error or short 
coming. 
If similar documents exist in some other countries, then the task of stand 
ardization can be further simplified by assigning to these documents the same 
authority as to the American ones. 
The crucial point in this approach is, of course, the extent of the differ 
ences among the various available documents, and in turn the extent of differ 
ences between all of them and the proposal prepared by Commission I. Because 
these documents (the two American and others if they exist) are not declara 
tions of diametrically opposed political philosophies, but are representations of 
the same technical reality, we may expect to find in them more points of 
agreement than of apparent disagreement. 
It seems to me that a favourable similarity actually exists between the 
American point of view, as expressed in the two documents mentioned previ 
ously, and the tentative international point of view, as expressed in the pro 
posal by Commission I. My own rather optimistic analysis of the situation 
seems to be supported by the American comments on the international pro 
posal. Copies of these comments were kindly forwarded to me by Mr. Carman 
together with copies of all other comments which he received. I hope it is not 
a wishful exaggeration to say that the internationally proposed practices and 
the American one are in general agreement. 
The fundamental point of agreement is the acceptance of the same philo 
sophy of testing by both the Military Standard (MIL-STD-150) and the Inter 
national proposal. The philosophy is that testing should be done under con 
ditions approaching as far as practical the conditions of actual use. Such an 
agreement eliminates a large area of controversy, since it significantly reduces 
the freedom of choice of materials and procedures. 
If it could now be agreed that any laboratory may use suitable simplified 
methods, for the reason of its own particular convenience, the basic work of 
international standardization would be advanced perhaps 80 per cent. 
The remaining 20 per cent of the effort then would be dedicated to a 
reconciliation of terminology. 
The need for such a reconciliation is emphasized by the fact that the inter 
national proposal does not recognize a number of firmly established American 
terms. Among these are: equivalent focal length, principal point (as a point 
different from the “principal point of autocollimation” defined in the pro