Canada 3
now making a useful contribution to photogrammetry in Canada. Emphasis
is placed on the development of techniques suited to Canadian conditions rather
than on the design of new equipment. However some minor items have been
developed which include a steering device to control the x, v, and z motions of
a stereoplotter, a profile recorder which registers the vertical movement of a
multiplex table on a rotating drum and a straight line plotter used to produce
a straight line through a series of forward facing oblique air photographs. The
principal techniques now under study are analytical bridging, and aero triangula
tion utilizing correlated bi-camera photography and radar altimetry. The latter
has given very favourable results and indications are that bridges in order of
300 km in length can be run with much greater precision than hitherto possible.
Access to electronic computing facilities has made it possible for the Section
to carry out investigations in the field of analytical bridging. Encouraging
results have been obtained from the initial experimental work which was based
on observations taken on Cambridge stereo-comparator.
An independent development in equipment is a special plotting table
designed for use with multiplex and known as the Gamble Stereoplotter Type
T301. This plotting table replaces the conventional tracing table with a table
covering the entire overlap. The horizontal plane is depicted by a grid of light
dots projected on to the table and the vertical distance from the projectors to
the table may be adjusted for any desired contour level. It is considered
that this equipment will reduce plotting time and will make more effective
use of the skill of trained Topographers.
Photographic Interpretation
Air photographic interpretation is being applied in Canada for topo
graphical mapping and for military, geological, geographical, agricultural and
forestry purposes. It is also applied to some extent in road, railway and electric
transmission line location, as well as for various other engineering projects.
One of the geographical applications has been the employment of aerial
photographs in the investigation of vegetation for climatic and zonal demarca
tions. The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration has been successful in
an interpretation of soil conditions from air photographs to facilitate irrigation
and water development surveys. Air photographic interpretation is being
employed in forest inventories throughout Canada. Forest sites are also being
interpreted and a system has been developed whereby land form position and
vegetation are employed to indicate soil moisture, parent soil material and great
soil group.
Non-Topographical Photogrammetry
The usual procedures of aerial photography are successfully applied to
such problems as the measurement of pulp-wood piles and special techniques
have been developed for the measurement of water currents by the Parallax
method and the determination of deformation in structures from photographic
records.
Some progress has been made in micro-photogrammetry for which there
are many obvious uses. This progress has been hampered by the lack of suitable
distortion-free lenses and the National Research Council has therefore undertaken
the design and development of a family of such lenses.