Map Making 1961 - video

[Dave Hughes]

Interesting video from British Pathé - you need to keep watching to the end to get the printing industry action. There's a huge process camera, ink mixing and massive litho plates being attached to a press.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7SJVBX7jxo

Various brief shots illustrating the changing countryside; a tree being felled; workman at a table looking at plans while another holds a pneumatic drill beside a 'Road Works Ahead' sign; a man on a machine chucking up earth; a large pipe being lowered into the ground; a new (and nearly empty) motorway (this is from CP 325 - 300 M.P.H. Road).

Various shots of Bert Smith using a tellurometer; a machine with a kind of aerial dish on the front that measures distances through sound waves for ordnance survey maps; another man sits at the 'speaker' of the machine and makes notes.  Three men are seen at adding machines in an Ordnance Survey office; a girl feeds some cards into an IBM computerised sorting machine. 

Various shots of Dennis Braten using a stereo plotting machine which traces a 6 inch scale map from  an aerial photographic plate.  On a field by a parked Land Rover, Norman Facey uses a sight rule on a 6 inch detail survey and draws across the map. 

In another Ordnance Survey office, some men are seen working on very detailed maps; panning C/U of one of the maps.  M/Ss and C/Us as a draughtsman tracing hill outlines on wax-coated glass; very exacting work!

M/S as two men fix a map into position on a wall; an elderly man, George Dart, operates a huge camera to take a copy of the map.  From the negatives, zinc printing plates are etched out; M/S of a printing plate being loaded into a printer.  Comical M/S of Joe Hollingsworth mixing some red ink on a table; it looks like ketchup!  M/Ss of the maps being printed.  M/S of a couple, Janet and Alan Franks in a village looking at a Ordnance Survey map then walking off.