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ir l’augmentation de sa
urces.
ird’hui et vos collègues
periation internationale
tre system politique est
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la cartographie photo-
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de la procedure demo-
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it l’echange de renseig-
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croix que si l’on desire
>, ces congres devraient
la distribution de nos
:s a ce congres.
PHOTOGRAMMETRY AS A TOOL IN INTERNATIONAL
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
E. Reeseman Fryer,
Assistant Administrator for the Near East and Africa Development Service,
Technical Cooperation Administration, Department of State.
It would be foolish indeed for me to attempt to speak to you as if I were
an expert on photogrammetry.
I have the greatest difficulty even in understanding the language that you
speak.
However, there are some things about photogrammetry that I do under
stand, and to me these are the really important things.
The first thing is that maps are essential in development work of almost
every kind. They are necessary for land-use planning, highway building, port
improvement, irrigation and drainage, power development, mineral explora
tion, forestry, and almost every other field of modern progress.
The second thing is that photogrammetry is the cheapest, quickest — and
in many areas the only practical — way of making the basic maps that we
need in general development work.
A third thing is that aerial photography, especially largescale photography,
is useful and valuable in a great variety of ways-perhaps in many more ways
than we have yet discovered. Aerial photographs are being used in census work,
crop estimates, forest inventories, malaria control, soil surveys, and other
activities which are helping develop the resources and improve the levels of
living in many parts of the world.
A fourth thing I can understand is that aerial photography, when carried
out in combination with airborne magnetometry and some of the other tools
of the modern prospector, is helping to locate important new sources of useful
and strategic materials. This not only means a great deal to the immediate
defense efforts of the free world, but — what is probably more important in
the long run — it is providing new industries and sources of income for under
developed regions.
I first became acquainted with photogrammetry back in the early days of
the soil conservation movement in this country. These were also the early days
of photogrammetry. When the United States Soil Conservation Service began
its program of land-use improvement in the vast expanses of our Western
States, it needed good maps in a hurry. Naturally, we turned to photogram
metry.
It has been almost twenty years since the Navajo Indian country was
surveyed by Fairchild. These surveys were used for a variety of purposes, but
their first and most dramatic use was to provide the basic data from which to
calculate the carrying capacity of the grass lands.
The world has turned around a good many times in those twenty years.
War and the threat of war have hung over us almost continuously ever since.
Sometimes, when we are in a cynical mood, we cannot help thinking that