Contoured Road Map of Harrogate. by ORDNANCE SURVEY - CLOSE, Sir Charles Frederick Arden- (1865–1952)

Southampton: Colonel Sir Charles Close, 1927. Single sheet (21 x 30 inches). Fine folding chromolithographed map laid down on linen. Original pictorial printed paper covers to verso (a bit browned at folds). Provenance: with the blind library stamp of Henry Paul Busch of Philadelphia. Popular Edition, One-Inch Map, Sheet 26 (Yorkshire). According to the imprint, first surveyed in 1843-52 and published in 1858-9. Revised in 1896-7 and in 1910-11, again in 1920-1, and printed in this format in 1924, reprinted as here in 1927. Sir Charles Close was appointed director-general of the Ordnance Survey "on 18 August 1911. He found the organization ‘rather out of touch with the scientific world’. He proceeded with a second geodetic levelling of the United Kingdom, creating ‘fundamental’ bench marks which have been of lasting value. He also established three mean-sea level tidal stations—at Dunbar, Newlyn, and Felixstowe, of which the second remains in operation. Close also turned his attention to the cartography of the Ordnance Survey with the intention of revolutionizing the appearance of the one-inch map. His first attempt, the Killarney District map (1913), was crowned with success. For artistic achievement in colour printing it remains unsurpassed by the Ordnance Survey. But the processes involved were too expensive in post-war Britain, and a simpler model was adopted for the one-inch map. This new style lacked the coloured layers, hill-shading, and hachures of the Irish sheet, but, with a smaller contour interval and revised road classification system, it set the pattern for all subsequent one-inch series. In 1919, Close secured the appointment of a civilian archaeology officer, O. G. S. Crawford, resulting in a highly acclaimed series of historical maps of which the first was Roman Britain (1924)...During the First World War the Ordnance Survey printed 32 million maps for the armies in France and elsewhere. Close, who had been promoted major (1901), lieutenant-colonel (1908), and colonel (1912), periodically visited the western front. After the war Close had the disagreeable task of implementing drastic cuts in the Ordnance Survey establishment which had been recommended by the Geddes committee. A direct result of this was that the large-scale plans fell massively into arrears by the 1930s" (J. De Graaff-Hunter, rev. Yolande Hodson for DNB)...