Photogrammetry

from John A. Brashear Company, Ltd. Catalogue Optical, Physical, Astrophysical and Astronomical Instruments, 1906

Measuring Engine

It is interesting to me that the first “scientific” applications of photography were in the areas of astrophotography and mapmaking. Arago spoke of “the rapid method which topography might borrow from the photographic process” in 1839, and by 1840 Draper photographed the moon. However, Josef Eder notes in his History of Photography, “As a scientific method, photogrammetry was first developed and introduced into practice about 1851 by Aimé Laussedat” (398). By 1861, a map of the village of Buc near Versailles had been made photographically at a scale of 1:2,000 (399).

What seems different about the photographic investigations of the 1880s is the use of probability and statistical formulae by Galton to attempt to detect core similarities in the topography of faces. I am starting to see Muybridge’s work with locomotion more an outgrowth of the previous mapmaking activities. It doesn’t seem as progressive as I first thought. Galton’s work with composites is a completely different sort of mathematics.

Mapmaking became more complex mathematically, I suspect, with the advent of aerial photography and the application of stereo photography to mapmaking in 1901. Prior to 1880 photographic work seems to be based in simple algebra— after that, it becomes a more complex calculus.

February 2, 2005 12:32 AM