Abstract
MANY abortive attempts were made before the War to found an international hydrographic organisation, but success was not achieved until after the War, when a conference was held in London, in 1919, at the invitation of the British Admiralty, with the cordial support of the French hydrographic office. Twenty-one states were represented at the conference, invitations having been sent to all countries likely to be interested, with the exception of the Central Powers, Russia, and Turkey. As a result an International Hydrographic Bureau was instituted in 1921, and all the States represented at the conference have now associated themselves with it. The Bureau has its official seat at Monaco. Soon after its institution it became affiliated to the League of Nations, and it uses the official languages of the League, namely, English and French. Its three chief officials are Sir J. D. Parry (Great Britain), Admiral Phaff (Netherlands), and Captain Miiller (Norway), the first-named being president. It confines itself to hydrography in the strictly nautical sense of the word, and one of its chief objects at present is the international standardisation of practice in relation to many maritime matters. For example, in relation to charts, among the questions which arise are those of the type of projection, the scale, the choice of units for depth and distance, the mode of delineation of soundings, the symbols and abbreviations, and the geographical names to be used. Lists of lights, sailing directions, and distance tables are other matters on which more uniformity and co-operation would be advantageous. It may be noted that most countries now use metric units for depth, Japan being one of the latest formally to adopt this system, though it has not yet actually introduced it. Great Britain and America are now the only States which exclusively use the fathom and foot, but the change to the metric system is one which they are as yet unwilling to make, because of the great difficulty and cost of altering the copper plates from which are printed the exceptionally large number of charts which these countries produce.
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International Hydrography. Nature 112, 301–302 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/112301b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/112301b0