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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Ordnance Survey
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(Southampton) The government department responsible for providing maps of Britain (in scales ranging up to 1:1250, or 50 inches to the mile, for densely populated areas). It was founded in 1791 to chart the country for the ordnance (the artillery) and it rapidly acquired a sense of urgency because of the threatened invasion by Napoleon; for this reason the first county map to be published, in 1801, was of Kent. That was one inch to the mile, but by 1848 London was being mapped at 60 inches to the mile.
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Since World War II the entire country has been surveyed on a metric National Grid, giving every place a precise reference point; this involved the setting up of nearly 20,000 triangulation stations (commonly known as trig points, many of them marked by a concrete trig pillar). In 1971 the information began to be stored in digital form on computer, and this is increasingly how it is supplied to other mapmakers.
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