188 RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF APPROXIMATE INSTRUMENTS, DISCUSSION
approximate solutions gave really a good result;
and in the hope of finding out better approaches
to the design of plotting instruments which could
combine precision with low cost.
In general, the theory of approximation of
the machines which existed at the time was very
inadequate. Tô my mind, the simplest and most
logical design of the class of instruments should
be based on the generation of what we call the
scale parameter, because as soon as this para-
meter is correctly evaluated as a function of the
photographic coordinate, the determination of
the ground position and height becomes simply
linear transformations.
I have further shown that the scale parameter
is very well represented by the equation of the
hyperbolic paraboloid in the photo coordinates
re-scaled according to the parallax. There would
be no need to split the models because the error
will never exceed 1 : 10,000 for 11° of inclina-
tion of the camera axis. For 3° this error is
about 1 : 6,000.
There will also be no need to stratify the
model for the equation hold in mountainous
regions.