Inverness Conservancy Office Cartographic Equipment
Images are courtesy of Andrea Borsden, Inverness who is sitting in the processing room with some equipment in view.
Behind Andrea is the process camera which takes images of printed matter including maps onto photographic sensitive paper. The camera has the ability to take images at accurate set scales different to that of the original. Note the two side lights which illuminate the subject to be copied. See PDF for Andrea’s hand written notes taken at this period which explain some of the multiple adjustments of the apparatus.
In front on left is a partial view of the Rapiline 66 film processor where the exposed photo sensitive sheets from the other machines were automatically processed and fixed by feeding them into this apparatus.
In the PDF is a view of the print room which shows a vacuum frame - image copier on the right hand side. The function of this apparatus was to carry out contact copying onto photo sensitive material of printed material such as maps at exactly the same scale as the original.
Next also on the PDF is a view of part of the print room used previously on the website (No 2616). This time the focus is on the large machine behind the ladies which has a venting pipe running up the wall. This in the Ozalid Dyeline printing machine which was used to run off exact copies of thousands of stock maps and other maps used by foresters from original master copies drawn onto clear acetate type film. The venting pipe drew away the very strong ammonia smelling fumes that resulted from the process which used paper coated in diazonium salts. Again Andrea has written notes up in the 1980s on this apparatus and they are also attached to this PDF.
It can be seen from the above in addition to cartographic drawing skills the team members had to be proficient with quite a number of processes and the photo copying equipment. The types of maps were also very varied and of varying scales and included those used by road engineers, estate agents, survey foresters, field foresters etc as well as prints for publications.
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Groups: Forestry in Action, Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports, Tools, equipment and clothing
Bill Comment left on 09 May 2020 at 16:02 by Bill Rayner