Evening star., 1935-01-24
LARGEST CAMERA
TOBE TESTED SOON
Nine.LenS Machine to Be of
Invaluable Aid to
MapmakerS.
By the Associated Press.

By the Associated Press.
The largest camera "eye" which ever
has peered down on the landscapes
Of the Nation will be taken into the
air for testing early this Summer.
1t is a nine-lens camera, which is
being built in commercial laboratories
under the direction of the mapping
experts of the Coast and Geodetic
Survey.
At present, mapping experts of
this country, as well as those of
others, are using f1ve-lens camera
But the resulting picture comes in
five pieces which, when fitted together,
resemble maltese cross.
The nine-lens camera will pro-
duce one complete film, filling in the
corners left empty by the crosslike
picture made with the five-lens
camera.
The new camera remains to be
tested, but it is being made under an
exacting guarantee of performance
and the survey staff feels free to
discuss it. u
To Cut Cost.
From present estimates it will re-
duce the cost of photo mapping by
40 per cent. It will reduce the time
needed to make a map from weeks
to days.
Where three films must be made by
the present five-lenS camera to take
an adequate record of a certain area,
only one picture need be made by the
new camera. 1t will take picture
of 125 square miles from an elevation
Of $4,000 feet.
A similar camera is in use in Ger
many. But the American camera, it is
said, will be superior in performance,
since the German nine-lenS camera
takes pictures in nine sections, which
must be pieced together before the
final map can be made
The new camera is expected to
speed up mapping of the countrys
surface appreciably. 1t is being built
specifically to complete revisions of
coastal maps.
Familiar as the map of the United
States seems to every citizen, only
26 per cent of the countrys surface
has been mapped on standard United
States principles.
The other "a per cent has surprising
ways of throwing confusion into
branches of industry and trade
Tedious Work.
Capt. r. S. Patton, director of the
survey, gives an example of the tedious
work which must be done when exact
maps are lacking. Recently a South
ern farm loan director came to him
for maps of farms in his State.
Farmers were sending, with their ap-
plication, overlapped descriptions
given by their neighborS. The only
means left the loan experts for de-
termining the boundaries of land on
which they were making loans was to
make personal visits to the sites. Such
methods are both tedious and eX-
pensive.
Some photo maps now made by the
Coast and Geodetic Survey delineate
characteristics of the land so well
that fence lines and farm buildings
are visible Such complete pictures
are then transferred to maps, which
are used for a number of purposes
planning water power development,
drainage and irrigation projects,
flood control, highway location and
boundary lines.
In addition to developing this new
camera, Lieut.. Oliver S. Reading of
the survey staff is developing an in
tricate mechanism which can adjust
the distortions that appear necessarily
in aerial photography, much of it
due to the slight fitting of the plane
from which the photo map is made.
The plate with its slight distortion
along the edge will be placed in the
new mechanism, a "rectifier," and
tilted this way and that until the
angle Of the plane is justified on the
film, and picture made which un-
rolls the miles of landscape before the
eye just as fatty as a passenger in
q plane would see it looking straight
down.
Such machines are already in use
In Europe, but they tilt the position
of the film just two ways. The ma
chine being developed here will tilt the
film all four ways possible to a plane
in flight. The adjustments will be
made mechanically.