COMMISSION III 
Aerial Triangulation - Aérotriangulation - Aerotriangulation 
President: Professor E.H. Thompson, UK; Secretary: Mr. D.W. Proctor, UK 
Tuesday July 25 1972, 14:00 
President's Review for the years 1968 - 1972 
In the President's Report for the period 1964 - 1968, the activities of the Commission were said to be based 
on the Resolutions passed at the 10th Congress in Lisbon in 1964. In particular it was mentioned that, as a 
result, à Commission III symposium would be held sometime in the years between 1964 and 1968. 
A comparable set of Resolutions were passed at Lausanne, but which did not include one calling for a 
symposium although it was clearly understood by all concerned that a symposium would be held. Of the six 
Resolutions passed perhaps only one, the last, has been the subject of any deliberate action, and it is with very 
great pleasure that it can be announced that a most valuable report has been prepared by James M. Anderson 
and Everett H. Ramey which has been included among the Invited Papers at the 12th Congress. 
It has been the custom in the past to use the President's Report to give summaries of activities in a selection 
of countries. It is to be hoped that a departure from this practice will not cause undue criticism. All the 
information relevant to Commission III is, or should be, included in National Reports, and it is desirable, with 
the ever-increasing volume of printed matter, to avoid duplication. 
Again, it has been the practice to close a Congress with a set of Resolutions put forward by each Commission. 
One must not expect too much from these Resolutions. They are in the nature of exhortations based on what 
the leading workers in the field think are the desirable directions in which to proceed. If they are ignored 
completely, the loss will certainly be to the various institutions at which Aerial Triangulation is carried out; 
but, only when a working group is set up with specific terms of reference, can one expect any direct reference 
to a Resolution. Now it may well be that the Resolutions as formulated are taken by members in this spirit, 
but, by the way in which they are formulated, they may be regarded on the one hand in a more mandatory 
spirit, and on the other as not clearly setting out what the Commission members meeting at a Congress think 
should be done. For example, Resolution 1 (a) of 1968 says that “Data Acquisition is a theme of interest”. 
What exactly is meant by that?: more to the point, what did I mean by that? for I was one of those who helped 
to draw up the Resolutions. It would, surely, have been much more valuable if we had said in what way 
methods of data acquisition were then unsatisfactory and how they might have been improved. I wonder if it 
would not be better therefore, if members agree, to confine Resolutions to those which the Commission expects 
to be carried out before the next Congress, and to include the exhortations in the form of a review of the 
position reached at the date of a Congress, together with guide lines to the direction in which we think progress 
should be made. I hope perhaps that consideration might be given to this idea, which can be discussed 
privately, and that we can find opportunities for open debate. There are obvious difficulties, not least of which 
is to find someone capable of preparing a coherent statement in the available time. 
I might add that, if my proposals are adopted in principle, I would have been under an obligation to hold a 
symposium, and it would not have been left to my discretion. In fact, we did hold a symposium in London in 
1971, and I would not be able to face you now if I had not. 
The papers read at this symposium have now been published and circulated to those who attended the meeting, 
and further copies are available. When one is in the chair at a meeting, it is impossible to say if 1t 1s a success; 
but, it did satisfy the conditions of being a small meeting of eighty invited delegates, and the discussions were 
certainly lively, and, as far as I could understand them, well-informed. I am afraid we English-speakers are 
becoming very lazy for, as time goes on, we more and more assume that everyone can speak our language. At 
the London symposium we made no provision for simultaneous translations, and there were no criticisms of 
this. Certainly those for whom English is not their mother tongue presented their papers with complete clarity. 
May I assure those who think that we English-speakers are in an enviable position, that there is another side 
to the coin. We have to accept the fact that we now have International English as well as the Queen's English. 
Those who speak uncommon languages can be thankful they have only themselves and their own newspapers 
to blame if their language is debased. But perhaps we should have made provision for recording and publishing 
the discussions. I do not myself think, along with some, that **the discussion is the most interesting part of the 
paper”. If we are honest we should admit that discussions are often illconceived and inconclusive; and, 
although there are those who have carefully studied the paper under discussion, and come prepared with valid