The wild heerbrugg A5 in britain in 2014

In 1993, Clifford Burnside published the results of his survey of analogue photogrammetric equipment in British institutions, including those 28 instruments, aerial cameras and associated items by then already held in museum collections (Burnside, 1993). In response to the Council of the Photogrammetric Society's fear that important and interesting instruments were being lost as analytical and digital systems replaced obsolete analogue equipment, Burnside aimed to identify the extant examples before they were scrapped or mothballed and to summarise histories of the different types employed in Great Britain. Burnside contributed a series of further extracts on the analogue instrument project. Twenty-one years on, this paper reviews and updates the stories of one of the most interesting and historically significant types, the Wild Heerbrugg A5 Autograph universal plotting instrument. The Wild A5, a first-order photogrammetric instrument that could be used with both aerial and terrestrial stereoscopic imagery, was based on a Swiss patent taken out by Heinrich Wild in 1935 (Burnside, 1995). By September 1938, when Wild's first production model, A5 No. 50, was exhibited in Rome at the Fifth International Photogrammetric Congress, it was in direct competition with Zeiss products (Collier, 2002, p. 168) and it was these Swiss and German instruments that interested Francis Wills and Percival Burchall of aerial survey firms Aerofilms/Aircraft Operating Company Ltd in pre-war Britain. This is an opportune time to review the story of the Wild A5 in Britain. Since 2011, the Britain from Above project has been working on the archive of Aerofilms Ltd, arguably the world's first commercial concern dedicated to the capture of aerial photography. Formed in 1919 by Francis Lewis Wills (co-founder of The Photogrammetric Society and elected its President in 1959) with pioneer aviator Claude Grahame-White, Aerofilms Ltd went on to amass a collection of some 1·2 million oblique aerial photographs which are now curated in the public archives of project partners English Heritage and the Royal Commissions on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and Wales. The Britain from Above project is conserving, digitising and cataloguing the oldest part of this collection, dating from 1919 to 1953, and presenting this online at www.britainfromabove.org.uk. The remarkable history of Aerofilms Ltd is now presented in a popular exhibition at the RAF Museum, Hendon, where A5 No. 50 forms an important part of the displays (see also Wickens, 2014). Work on the instrument to bring it into the exhibition has prompted further research on the present whereabouts of the other A5s brought to Britain, enabling Burnside's survey to be updated. Wing Commander Burchall, our chief surveyor, and I made a tour of the Zeiss works at Jena, and there we saw their massive machine called the AEROCARTOGRAPH, demonstrated by the famous Professor Hugershoff who claimed that he preferred sleeping with his machine to with his wife. Then we went on to see “Wild” in Switzerland, and the super-salesman Albert Schmidheini, who demonstrated the precision of the Wild A.5. Stereo Autograph plotting machine, constructed on the basis of their country's Swiss watch-making craftsmanship, thus producing a much smaller machine than the German type, with greater precision of operation, introducing ball-bearing movements ensuring the least amount of wear and tear. We came home to report to the directors our strongest recommendation to buy, when possible, Wild equipment. (Wills, 1964, pp. 2–3) Wild A5 No. 50 arrived in Wembley later that year, resplendent with the 1938 International Society for Photogrammetry Rome Congress medal which it still bears to this day (Fig. 1). Costing £5500, it may have been smaller than the Zeiss machine yet it still required a special room of its own at the office, with a vibration-proof concrete base and air conditioning to maintain conditions favourable to the accuracy of its work. Michael Spender, a geographer with expedition experience in Greenland and the Himalayas (Babington-Smith, 1957, p. 37) was employed as the first photogrammetrist in readiness for both home and overseas contracts, and in anticipation of general recognition that the company had become the leader in Britain for photogrammetry and mapping from aerial photographs (Wills, 1964, p. 3). Barr and Stroud Ltd had been developing home-grown plotting apparatus with the War Office during the inter-war years (Petrie, 1977) but these had not reached commercial exploitation, principally because the advanced state of the Ordnance Survey's mapping for Britain meant that there was little financial advantage in extensive map revision by photogrammetric instruments when older established field methods were fit for purpose and cheaper (Hotine, 1930, p. 149; 1931, p. 193; Macdonald, 1992, pp. 251–254; Collier, 2006, p. 107). For an air survey company wanting to produce accurate, intensive, work for private clients, however, importing one of the available continental machines made commercial sense. Nevertheless, the significance of A5 No. 50 lies not only in its status as Wild's first production model and the first of its type to be imported to Britain. The machine's well-known role during the Second World War (Babington-Smith, 1957; Powys-Lybbe, 1983; Conyers Nesbit, 2003), employed on interpretation and mapping from reconnaissance photographs over the theatres of conflict, has ensured its place in history and its curation at the RAF Museum, Hendon. Burnside (1995, pp. 255–257) identified six A5s bought by UK organisations (Table 1), of which three were in use during the Second World War. An updated review of each instrument's history follows. The story of A5 No. 50 is well documented. Following acquisition by Aerofilms/AOC Ltd around the time of the Munich crisis, and its application to secret air photograph analysis during much of 1939 (Hemming, 1941; Conyers Nesbit, 2003), A5 No. 50 was transferred to the Central Interpretation Unit stationed at RAF Medmenham (Danesfield House, Berkshire, UK) along with much of the rest of the requisitioned equipment and staff in Spring 1941 (Air Ministry, 1940–1945, entry for 9th April 1941). The value of the instrument to Allied success in the Second World War has been compared with that of the Bombe and Colossus for code breaking at Bletchley Park (Conyers Nesbit, 2003, p. 107; Halsall, 2013). When Francis Wills was reconstituting Aerofilms Ltd with demobilised staff members from 1945, now under the aegis of the Hunting family group of companies, he was able to recover A5 No. 50 from the Air Ministry. It was installed in the kitchen of the new offices at Elm Lodge, Elstree, Hertfordshire, UK where Aerofilms Ltd recommenced business in January 1946 (Wills, 1964). Two years later Aerofilms Ltd and Hunting Aerosurveys Ltd moved into new premises at 6 Elstree Way, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, UK (Fig. 2). A5 No. 50 was retained until, in the late 1970s, it was donated to the RAF Museum, dismantled, carefully packed up and delivered by technician Derek Philpot along with a Wild RC5 aerial camera (personal communication from J. Leatherdale, 24th September 2013). The museum's Archive Department also has a copy of the Wild Autograph Model A5 manual, written by E. Berchtold and published in 1938 (accession number 028444), which includes some manuscript annotations made presumably by one of the instrument's past operators. We have written you several letters, all of which have been returned to us as being undeliverable. In the first place, not one case of the new Wild A.5 has reached us, and no information is obtainable as to where the nine cases are lying. Will you please endeavour to find out where they are from your end? The last that we heard was that they had been checked by the PLM Railway at Vallorbe. This A5, serial number unknown, appears to have been captured by the Germans at Bordeaux (JARIC, 2000). The Ordnance Survey had purchased A5 No. 54 in 1939. Arriving after the declaration of war, it had been assembled in early 1940 but was severely damaged in air raids on Southampton. The Air Ministry undertook to salvage it using components smuggled from Switzerland in a covert operation described by Harry Dawe (1974). This instrument was to have been returned to the Ordnance Survey following VE Day, but was re-badged as A5 No. 95 and by the end of 1945 was in possession of Hunting Aerosurveys Ltd, ready for use in survey work to support post-war reconstruction (personal communication from J. Leatherdale, 16th August 2014). As A5 No. 95, this instrument was acquired by the University of Sheffield from Hunting Aerosurveys Ltd in 1980. The university later donated the instrument to Eden Camp Modern History Theme Museum; in September 2003 the museum transferred it on long-term loan to the Medmenham Collection in the Military Intelligence Museum (Ministry of Defence, Chicksands, Bedfordshire, UK) (Halsall, 2013) where it was furbished and assembled by a team including experienced technicians Paul Sancto and Ernie Wickens (personal communication from E. Wickens, 10th June 2014). A5 No. 81 is now lost. This instrument arrived in 1943 at RAF Nuneham Park, an outlier of RAF Medmenham where the Central Interpretation Unit's Library, Model Section, part of the Photogrammetry Section, and the School of Photographic Interpretation were based (JARIC, 2000; Halsall, 2012). Little is known about how it was shipped to Britain, except that the journey is thought to have been via Gibraltar and probably involved the Ministry of Economic Warfare (Halsall, 2013). After a period at the Directorate of Overseas Surveys, in 1970 A5 No. 81 was transferred to the Bolton Street Technical College, Dublin (Republic of Ireland) (Burnside, 1995, p. 255). There it was removed from service in the 1970s (personal communication from A. McGill, 24th March 2014). The college is now part of the Dublin Institute of Technology, where A5 No. 81 is likely to have been scrapped following the refurbishment of a laboratory about 10 years ago, if not before (personal communication from K. Mooney, 21st March 2014). When Francis Wills and Percy Lewellyn Hunting were planning to recommence commercial aerial survey work following the end of the Second World War, as Aerofilms Ltd and Hunting Aerosurveys Ltd, sourcing suitable equipment was a priority. The return of A5 No. 50 from the Air Ministry was negotiated, but Wills – who had connections with Wild Heerbrugg dating from the 1930s – seems to have arranged for a new instrument to be delivered from Switzerland so that burgeoning survey and mapping commissions could be met. According to Burnside (1995), a new A5, serial number 95, was delivered to the Hunting group around 1958. It transpires that this instrument had arrived in Britain before then, made possible perhaps because Hunting Aerosurveys Ltd was the UK agent for Wild. Its badge was swapped with the older A5 No. 54 (personal communication from J. Leatherdale, 16th August 2014). The new instrument, now numbered A5 No. 54, was “returned” to the Ordnance Survey. After a period at North East London Polytechnic it was given to Eden Camp Modern History Theme Museum (Burnside, 1995, p. 255) where it remains on display (personal communication from J. Pye, 26th March 2014). Ernie Wickens is also familiar with A5 No. 201, which he maintained at the Department of Photogrammetry and Surveying, University College London. Purchased in 1948, the university presented it to the National Museum of Science and Industry in 1986 (Burnside, 1995, p. 255). Mr Wickens oversaw the packing and provided notes of the use, maintenance and history of the instrument (personal communication from E. Wickens, 10th June 2014). A5 No. 201 is museum accession number 1986-1035, currently in storage at the museum's Large Object Store in Wroughton, Wiltshire (UK) (personal communication from R. Cook, 23rd August 2013). The last known British A5 is now lost. A5 No. 218 was the third Hunting Aerosurveys Ltd purchase, bought according to Burnside (1995, p. 256) in 1964 but clearly in place by the mid-1950s (Fig. 2). In 1981 it went to North East London Polytechnic's Department of Land Surveying (Burnside, 1995, p. 256); the Polytechnic is now the University of East London. A5 No. 218 was not in the university by the early 2000s, when the relevant department moved office, and it is not clear when it was disposed of (personal communications from B. Whiting, 21st and 27th March 2014). Although he did not mention it in his description of A5 No. 218, Burnside (1995, p. 256) seems to have had more information available – noting it as “scrap 1992” in the analogue instruments catalogue (Burnside, 1993, p. 574). The Photogrammetric Society's Council members were concerned to ensure the preservation of a range of the important analogue photogrammetric instruments maintained by British institutions. Three A5s were given survey catalogue numbers (Table 1). A5 No. 50 and A5 No. 201 were not given catalogue numbers because they were already in museum collections, the former for its significance to British military history and the latter for its technological importance. Neither was A5 No. 81 catalogued, because it was outside the remit of the survey, being by then in Ireland. Of the three “wartime” A5s – originally numbered 50, 54 and 81, and employed to such good effect by the Central Interpretation Unit during the Second World War – only one, A5 No. 54 (now numbered 95), received a catalogue number and Photogrammetric Society label. Fortunately, this instrument is in a museum collection whilst A5 No. 81 is sadly lost. Of the three “post-war peacetime” A5s, one used to train the photogrammetrists of the future (A5 No. 201 from University College London) and one used by the Ordnance Survey (A5 No. 95, now numbered 54) remain as representatives of the instrument's use in the business of photogrammetry in Britain. A5 No. 50 of course straddles the military and civilian worlds, and as the first of its kind contributes to representing the experimentation, innovation and development of photogrammetry during the inter-war years. The Photogrammetric Society's aim that a representative group of photogrammetric instruments be preserved has arguably been met for the Wild A5, with four of the six employed in Britain in both military and civilian contexts now held in museum collections. In educational terms, A5 No. 95 (ex-54) can be viewed in the Medmenham Collection within the Military Intelligence Museum; A5 No. 54 (ex-95) is on display at Eden Camp; and, with the help of key retired A5 technicians and users Ernie Wickens, John Leatherdale and Derek Philpot, A5 No. 50 has been recently re-displayed and contextualised at the RAF Museum as part of the Britain from Above exhibition (Wickens, 2014). An aim of the Britain from Above project is to make historical aerial photography more accessible to a wide audience. With A5 No. 50 the opportunity has been taken to interpret a complex instrument for the RAF Museum's largely family audience, in a new display. Furthermore, the project's Activity Team, which delivers hands-on community and educational projects, has worked with Enfield Rangers (Girl Guiding UK) to create a short, entertaining and informative film which is intended to explain the use and significance of A5 No. 50 to a young audience. The partnership project funded by the Heritage Lottery is able, therefore, to play a role in taking the Wild A5 beyond preservation, by introducing photogrammetry to new audiences.

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