![]() ![]() It took much conjecture and debate in the 1800s (even Charles Darwin weighed in) before the nature of the lines’ ice age construction was finally figured out. The lines are so remarkable they were initially considered to be the work of (mythical) men intent on purposes unknown. There’s another just above it at 350m, plus one further down the flanks of the Glen. Roughly 325metres above sea level, all around Glen Roy, nature has etched out a contour line. Streffleur, “Der gegenwärtige Standpunkt der Bergzeichnung in Plänen und Landkarten,” in Östereichische Militärische Zeitschrift, IX (Wien, 1868), Tafel no. ![]() ![]() The contours were obtained by photogrammetric methods. 27.19 captioned: “The vertically lighted plaster model and a precise contour map with a 1mm. (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), 541 fig. The images are taken from Arthur Howard Robinson, Elements of Cartography, 6 th ed.The body of the thesis however is to remain ‘on ice’ while I figure out how it might become a book. Now the PhD is done, I hope to have time to post more such ‘out-takes’. A problem with ‘precision’, he suggests, is that “the arbitrary location of contour slices through the terrain … cause omission or distortion of small features … Sometimes it is desirable to shift contours, within the limits of absolute accuracy, to more effectively portray a feature that is prominent in the landscape but not adequately revealed by the accident of geometry.” One wonders then, how often the OS might have shifted the position of a contour line. Elsewhere his writing was more complementary of contour lines – for their ‘precise values’ – so it was a surprise to read on, and find that, just as one might exaggerate the length of a nose on a drawing, one could equally shift a contour line on a map. Likewise, methods that gave precise terrain values were the least effective visually.” He suggested there is an “incompatibility between striving for visual realism on the one hand and precise attribute values on the other”. Robinson approaches the problem of expression with these words: “the most effective visual techniques did not give precise terrain information. Which shouldn’t surprise as the original plaster model face drawn from was also devoid of lashes, freckles, and with eyes closed, the face is devoid of expression. His has a clean, serene quality, or perhaps the expression is just vacant. All hairy protuberances are missing from Robinson’s face. Streffleur’s figure 2 exhibited eyebrows, and a hint of eyelash small features that help convey character. Robinson’s face-mountain (or ‘precise contour map’ of a face, as he termed it) has contours so tightly packed that the shape of the eyes begins to emerge. We get more information – less blank space – if the contours are reduced from a 5cm to a 1mm interval. ![]() But how can we know if these lines are as ‘precise’ as contours appear to be? How has the upper lip-to-nose distance been measured? Does it matter? And perhaps exaggerating the length of a nose actually better conveys some aspect of a character? Of figure 2, on the right, he says: “instead of the ideal horizontal lines, one draws the real lines of form existing in nature”. Yet as the contours on his example are drawn at roughly 5cm intervals, the eyes are missing. He is right, when we look at a face, we search out the eyes to tell us something of the character. Shows contours, interspersed with vertical hachures that – whilst “mathematically correct” – he thought “no one could call this example physically correct”. To illustrate this, he drew two versions of a “face mountain”. von Streffleur, like Dawson, thought systematic (mechanical) drawing methods – such as contour lines – would not exhibit the character of a face. OS master draftsman, Robert Dawson, thought maps should “be considered a full-face portrait of a county” and a “pictural exhibition to the eye”. V. To give a bit of backstory, much was written by mapmakers on “full-face” representations of place. So here they are compared and contrasted. Tidying old files, I rediscovered a “precise contour map” of a face, which reminded me of the face-mountain (Gesichtsberg) I wrote about at the outset of the PhD (that also hasn’t made the final cut). It’s been over a year since I last posted, but with work on the PhD now complete (call me Dr!) I’ve felt an urge to revisit some ‘fascinators’ that hadn’t made it into the thesis. ![]()
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