TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS IN PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATION
; UNDER COMMISSION VII
by
Robert N.Colwell, Space Sciences Laboratory, University of
California, Director, Berkeley Office, Earth Satellite Corporation,
USA
Introduction
According to the famous poet-philosopher, Santellena, "Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." As
suggested by the title of this paper, however, there is a far
less negative way of viewing the past 25 years of history in the
field of photographic interpretation. In fact, the following
might be considered as a parallel statement to Santellena's,
except that it is one which quite properly accentuates the posi-
tive rather than the negative in relation to photo interpretation:
"Those who can remember the past can exult in it and build upon
it." Rather than feeling condemned to repeat the past, we should
find it a great deal more uplifting and challenging to strive for
as much progress in the next quarter century as has been achieved
in the most recent one.
The assertion that photo interpretation progress has been usually
great during the past quarter century implies that progress in
this field was significantly less in prior times. Indeed, that
appears to be what history tells us. Such a conclusion was for-
cibly brought to my attention recently as I prepared a paper
that was much farther ranging than the present one. That paper
was entitled "History and Future of Remote Sensing Technology
and Education" (Colwell, 1978). As documented quite fully in that
paper, but also as indicated in the next section of the present
paper, it was as the aftermath of World War II that progress in
photo interpretation and related fields accelerated very greatly,
indeed. In my opinion most of this progress would not have come
about except for a great surge of interest in these fields during
the post-war period on the part of scientists in a great many
disciplines. By way of setting the stage for the sections which
follow, therefore, let us first examine the evidence that there
has, indeed, been such an increased interest.
Anyone who has had the exhilarating experience of attending the
annual national meetings of his professional society is likely
to have gained the impression on each such occasion that his
profession is growing by leaps and bounds and is commanding the
interest of most of the entire thinking world. For example, with-
in the United States this is exactly the feeling that many remote
sensing scientists have received, year after year, at annual
meetings of the American Society of Photogrammetry, as they have
talked with their fellow workers about the future of photography,
photo interpretation and other aspects of remote sensing. With
the benefit of 20/20 hindsight those of us who are the "old
timers" now can perceive that, until the beginning of the post-
war era, most of what we were experiencing was little more than
a warm glow at being in the presence of some hardworking pro-