22
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revolutionary if compared with the situation of 25 years ago. The changes «are not only drastic
by degree and magnitude, they also represent change of concepts and operations on new
conceptual levels, with much wider scope and application, interfacing with other disciplines to a
previously unknown degree. Such developments seem to follow a certain pattern which is typical
for the general features of automation and of systems and which explains to some extent the
revolutionary effects.
The pattern implies that technical progress often goes through 3 steps, each one leading to a new
dimension. We have seen that the developments in photogrammetry started first on a purely
technical level, attempting to improve previous performance by making use of new technical
tools and by developing their application. There may be further reaching anticipations already
on that level, but usually the first phase is a struggle with the gradually evolving technical
possibilities.
As soon as the technical problems of the first step are solved, then there is a certain explosion,
as tasks are solved or come within reach beyond the original scope. In other words, the power
of the tools and the related methods push into new thematic expansion, either by increased
complexity and increased economic performance, or by the sheer new accessibility of tasks pre
viously out of reach and therefore often out of concept.
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Many developments go through a third step by merging into complete and totally new systems,
with a new paradigm. On that level the original starting point is not recognizable any more, as
fusion with other techniques and methods has taken place, and the system may have outgrown
even the original discipline entirely.
3.2 A few examples may illustrate that scenario. We have reviewed that aerial triangulation,
analytical plotters, digital terrain models, computer assisted plotting took quite a long time
and extended efforts to accomplish the first step, i.e. to establish themselves on the first level
of improved technical performance. During that struggle the extended concepts were gradually
clarified and the breakthrough prepared.
By successfully mastering the first step, and by solving the problems in a rather general approach,
suddenly new qualities appear, leading to new more demanding applications. In this way the
block adjustment for aerial triangulation spread out into high precision cadastral or close range
photogrammetry, as well as into photogeodesy, apart from killing the classical first order analog
instruments which were designed for strip-triangulation. Computer assisted plotting blossomed
into digital mapping. Digital terrain models and orthophotos established themselves as new
products in their own right, forming the base for multiple derived products.
There are also examples in photogrammetry for developments which pass beyond the second
step by producing or making part of larger systems which as such had not existed before. They
imply a completely new look at tilings, with new demands, new requirements, new results. If
it will be possible, for instance, to measure all external orientation parameters of photographs
or sensors-accurately enough (with GPS we are partly on the way) then all indirect orienta
tion methods in photogrammetry, aeri.al triangulation included, might become obsolete, which
have dominated the working methods for more than 60 years. The real examples of change of
paradigm are, however, the steps from digital mapping to geo-information systems, from mul-
tispectral classification to complete object restitution, and in particular the step from present
day digital image processing to «automatic image analysis and to computer vision, including
knowledge based systems and artificial intelligence as most powerful disciplines.
