108 PRESENTATION OF THE GENERAL REPORT
or details were specifically put for the clear pur-
pose of collecting all possible technical infor-
mation on the various working procedures,
The questionnaire was sent out accompanied
by a circular letter specifying the Commission’s
aims and suggesting how best to reply. This
questionnaire was sent out in November, 1959,
and sought information relating to the use of
triangulation from January, 1956, up to the
end of 1959. Much to this Commission’s great
satisfaction a wealth of detailed information
began to pour in from February, 1960. How-
ever, in spite of repeated requests for a reply,
both by circulars and personal letters, not all
questionnaire recipients and, above all, not all
the Commission’s rapporteurs obliged with a
reply. The general collection of the replies is
contained in Table 1 under the caption “Gen-
eral Information”. As customary the circulars
were addressed within the spheres of countries
belonging to the ISP. We must bear in mind,
however, that vast zones of evidently intense
photogrammetric activity have been left out
from the field of information; such zones are
perhaps the very ones which present a greater
photogrammetric interest, precisely because an
ever-increasing need of cartography is felt with
every day that passes.
On the whole, replies to the questionnaire
were exhaustive and fully answered the general
purpose of the questionnaire itself. We are glad
to acknowledge this and we wish to thank most
warmly and publicly all Commission III's rap-
porteurs in the different countries who have
most usefully collaborated in the work of the
Commission.
The criterion followed for presenting infor-
mation is the one adopted in almost all preced-
ing Reports, namely, to condense all infor-
mation and material into synthetic tables, per-
mitting immediate vision of the operating va-
riants of the different procedures. However, it
was thought preferable to build up considerably
large tables containing all the information con.
cerning a specific working procedure in its va.
rious stages, instead of sub-dividing it into
several smaller tables. Thus it has made possible
a correlated examination of the working differ-
ences in the various stages, namely, to follow
both through analysis and along the lines in
columns how procedures change in relation to
problems particular to each country or agency,
The tables total seven, the first contains all in-
formation of a general character, the second,
third and fourth contain all the other various
ways of carrying out triangulation, strip, in-
strumental, analytical and radial ones. The fifth,
sixth and seventh contain all the different work-
ing procedures for block triangulation, or in-
strumental, analytical and radial ones as well.
Our conclusion can be summarised as
follows: the analytical triangulation for strips,
but mainly for blocks, will be the kernel of the
experimental researches to be carried out in
future years. This working criterion should
record also in practice remarkable progress. The
progress of analytical triangulation will condi-
tion the development of methods and criteria of
flight, the choice of cameras and study of para-
meters, also of their inner orientation, the choice
of auxiliary equipment and their most fitting
use and the return to more rigid working
schemes. The adjustment criteria, after the en-
couragement due to theoretical researches,
should lead to more practical methods and with
more experimental than theoretical justifica-
tions.
The precision required in cartography will
have to adopt itself more closely to the practical
benefits of aerial triangulation at the cost of
fictitious requests for impossible precision. In
the future we shall perhaps see a more wide ap-
plication of those methods which are now only
marginal, such as the use of flights at different
altitudes in order to solve more economically
many cartographic problems.