Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Prologue: A Dinner Party for Captain Cook
- 1 Foundations: The Acquisition of Knowledge and Values
- 2 The Map-maker: Developing ‘the Soldier’s Eye’
- 3 The Military Engineer: Raids, Resources and Fortifications
- 4 The Antiquary in the Field: Empathy with the Army of Rome
- 5 The Practical and Sociable Scientist: Hypsometry and the Royal Society
- 6 The Geodesist: Large Triangles and Minuscule Adjustments
- 7 Aftermath and Legacy: The Birth of the Ordnance Survey
- Appendix 1 Chronology
- Appendix 2 General Roy’s Instructions on Reconnoitring
- Appendix 3 Glossary
- List of Abbreviations
- Bibliographical References
- Index
7 - Aftermath and Legacy: The Birth of the Ordnance Survey
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Prologue: A Dinner Party for Captain Cook
- 1 Foundations: The Acquisition of Knowledge and Values
- 2 The Map-maker: Developing ‘the Soldier’s Eye’
- 3 The Military Engineer: Raids, Resources and Fortifications
- 4 The Antiquary in the Field: Empathy with the Army of Rome
- 5 The Practical and Sociable Scientist: Hypsometry and the Royal Society
- 6 The Geodesist: Large Triangles and Minuscule Adjustments
- 7 Aftermath and Legacy: The Birth of the Ordnance Survey
- Appendix 1 Chronology
- Appendix 2 General Roy’s Instructions on Reconnoitring
- Appendix 3 Glossary
- List of Abbreviations
- Bibliographical References
- Index
Summary
OPERATIONS RESUME
The state moved swiftly to fill the vacancies caused by a death of a public servant, but the vultures had begun circling even more rapidly: on the very day that William died, Lieutenant General George Morrison, the Quartermaster General, wrote with haste to the Treasury, lobbying for his son to replace William as his Deputy. (He was to be disappointed.) William’s executors, David Dundas and James Livingstone, also set to very quickly: by 2 August they had arranged for James Christie to sell the house in Argyll Street, along with the majority of its contents. There is no indication of how much, if anything, William’s heir, Thomas Vincent Reynolds, had decided to retain, but he evidently had well-prepared plans to use the money now becoming available to him. In September he got married and soon began to acquire property around his wife’s home village in Essex.
The progress through the press of William’s paper on the Greenwich-Paris project had, of course, stalled. It was picked up by Charles Blagden who, by early August, had identified ‘several mistakes and blunders … principally in the numbers’. He had discussed some of these with William before his death and he had returned to it subsequently. Looking back to the earlier rows with Maskelyne and Ramsden, and conscious that the accuracy of a paper about Anglo-French cooperation was also a matter of national pride, he told Joseph Banks that there must be
very strong presumptions that many other errors still exist, and from what happened with regard to the General’s former paper, there can be no doubt that the French commissioners, especially Mons’r Méchain, will very strictly examine not only the reasoning but likewise all the computations in the General’s account of his operation and consequently will detect whatever blunders there are.
Cavendish had suggested to Blagden that the paper should be worked over in detail and that any errors should be published in the same volume of the Philosophical Transactions. Isaac Dalby, who had worked with William on the mathematical aspects of the paper, was the obvious choice to take this forward. William’s paper had already been set up in type, so it could not be easily changed without considerable expense.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- General William Roy, 1726-1790Father of the Ordnance Survey, pp. 250 - 269Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2022