William smith geologist biography of abraham
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The development and evolution of the William Smith geological map from a digital perspective
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Volume 26 Issue 7 (July )
GSA Today
Article, pp. | Abstract | PDF (MB)
Peter Wigley
Lynx Geographic Information Systems Ltd, Upper Richmond Road, Putney, London SW15 2TG, UK
Abstract
William Smith’s geological map of England and Wales is a masterpiece; the map differs from all other contemporaneous maps in that Smith applied the principles of stratigraphy to its construction. The maps are extremely rare and therefore not readily available for study and analysis; however, over the past decade a number of Smith geological maps have been digitally scanned and some incorporated into a Geographic Information System (GIS). Early nineteenth-century maps of the United Kingdom (UK) present a number of difficulties when trying to build them into a GIS, mostly related to projection problems and the fact that many pre-date the “1st Principal Triangulation”
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The Reader of Rocks
In William Smith published the first detailed geological map of an entire country. Its scope was ambitious, as his long, practical-poetic title suggests: A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with part of Scotland; exhibiting the collieries and mines, the marshes and fen lands originally overflowed by the sea, and the varieties of soil according to the variations in the substrata, illustrated by the most descriptive names. The map fryst vatten an object of great beauty, its array of thirty-four tints identifying different types of rock, clay, and sand: vivid green for the chalk downs, tawny red for the clay of Fuller’s Earth, purple for slate—colors that are still used today on maps for the British Geological Survey. Deeper tones show the “dip” where one stratum—a particular layer of rock—overlays another, giving an almost three-dimensional effect, so that the colors roll like waves across the land. At the same time, S
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William Smith&#;s "Strata Identified by Organized Fossils"
Soon after the first issue of his great geological map of England (and Wales and part of Scotland) in , William Smith published the Strata Identified by Organized Fossils. It was intended as a kind of geological users manual - the equivalent of the herbals of the day that provided the botanist or physician with illustrations to identify medicinal plants. But Smith’s work went beyond the mere illustration of fossils. Smith had deciphered the hieroglyphics of nature-the distinctive inscriptions borne by the different strata. With the Strata Identified . . . and its colored plates in hand, anyone would be able to compare the plates with fossils collected in the field and immediately identify the strata from which they came. The strata once identified, their place in the orderly succession of the strata-which lay above and which lay below, as Smith had determined it - was then known. All this, Smith wrote, "witho