[geodeticman.5]

Char - Thank you so much for expressing the interest in my Hal Shelton's house post as a springboard. And please - for any readers presently looking at THIS post reply, as I will make a few comments on the subject of Shelton's work ( map-making on 3-D looking natural colour cartography) if the subject matter is of no interest to you, or boring, I understand and suggest just skip the rest of my post here.....BUT.... out of respect for the time and effort CHAR went to to follow-up and check-out my citing Shelton - his work, and his house per the thread subject - of amazing houses....I am happily obliged to respond on what she took the time to study and look-up in searches on google on Shelton, and finding much of interest.

That is to say from above Char, the house post I made of Shelton's and as a de rigeur mention I had to make of the famous man that own(ed) it, your choice to use it as a springboard to your foray into the world ( no pun intended) of my professional passion Char, - of numerical (math-based versus artistic) cartography by looking up Shelton's work and finding these sites and papers that include so many professional heros of mine, the listings of cartographic scientists reads like on of my favoute textbooks.

I intended to truly add to the "amazing house" idea with my post, and was indeed enamoured of Hal Shelton's house - as amazing and groundbreaking as his professional work. Visiting his house was an event of a lifetime - he held a map and scientific illustration informal easel-presentation show in his home for peer-review (an honour indeed, and such humility academically on Shelton's part) to be included in "local cartographers and topographic engineers" (early federal term for geodetic and cartographic Surveyors), where he offered tea, a house tour, and, a fire-side talk to the adulating attendees.

LOL- well, adulating I was myself anyway, amidst more reserved and erudite experienced cartographers and academicians at the time. Versus me, a 2nd round of later-in life college just 4 years prior (1986) ( and third paper-chase since....groan), I qualified in the group as a wide-eyed and naive new kid on the geodetic/cartographic block in the area.

It was all I could do to not digress to a sufferin' sycophant meeting a professional legend that was in all my cartographic textbooks, and works on historical surveys of the American West - Powell, Hayden, et al earlier, and mid 1900's post depression - Shelton - who as you found is indeed a world-renowned physiographer - and when you are even placed in the company of the Swiss surveyors' cartographic work in a paper, or are even more so- cited by them , as was Shelton , and travel from Switzerland (where topographic surveying and relief cartography was born, and taken to a very high science, and in some cases - art; both...with Shelton) to Golden, Colorado, to engage in professional debate over technique - yes , Hal is/was indeed a world-class progenitor and genius in his work.

Char - I am apreciative of the readers being able to chose to appreciate a singularly fascinating thinking person's (yours) read in the hyperlinks you chose quite well on both Shelton, and the subject in general.

To seperate the man (Shelton) from his work, the subject (physiographic shaded relief),
and further from his HOUSE, which was as amazing as the man, would be a travesty in deference to what now I feel is an elegy to him ,sadly, as passed away, a personal hero, (why do mine keep dying?). I will avoid my post growing elegiac - if readers will allow me to use the apt but odd word one more time, as most appropriate now.

Short work of commenting on your well-thought-out links to Shelton references would be as follows for me, as you looked at deep waters in mapping Char, and some comment back would be in order, in excess would be presumptuous, which I wish to avoid.

The NACIS Journal white paper by Patterson/Kelso pointed out a favoured concept to me that Shelton held as a goal in physiographic relief maps - was stated to be "giving the map reader the sense of smelling the mountain [air] [on the summit]" - and to give the map reader the further sensory experience of "[being able to] hear the wind [on the summit]" in regards to his pursuit of perfection when working in Nevada as a USGS Topographic Engineer, and their relief rendering techniques. Ambitious indeed.

Jenny, Raber et al in the website on "Relief Shading" - was a very useful site for delving into several aspects of mapping, and indeed Shelton's models of what has been called historically "plastic" shading - in plastic's alternate sense.

Dr. Drachal of Warsaw is a world-renowned photogrammetric engineer/cartographer from the school of numerical cartography - utilizing math (nowadays) to pack into programs that make use of the rich model Shelton et al contributed varying schemes to , such as the "HSC CONE" - I mentioned in another thread- one I use in selecting color-gradient for elevation change - as the ground/rock/glaciers/ etc apear from both oblique views (at an angle), and orthogonal (from straight overhead) - as was/is the preferred method for airplane navigational map aids, such as Shelton's well-known long association with Jeppeson, an aviation -mapping and utility company that Hal did piece work for for years.
By American standards and language. Dr. Drachal makes a no-doubt unintentional misnomer when he refers to "physiognamy" - versus "physiography" and/or physiommetry"
I believe that was either a matter of translation from Polish, or perhaps the national scientific convention for the term. Interesting. Also the case with "chorographic" maps,
in the USA the term is "choroplethic" maps - dual-theme complexity in multi-hued maps, in short.

Also, to my astonishment, Dr. Drachel, himslef a respected and world-renowned cartographer and photogrammetrist, spoke of "oddly, Shelton's work had no following..."[sic] Oh sh** - that would be blaspheme in this North America and a good deal of European, Australia, the U.K, and a multitude of non former Soviet blocs.
Shelton is taught in USA's first book of Cartography taught in almost every University program on Surveying, Geodetic Engineering, Cartography, GIS, etc. - "Elements of Cartography" - now I believe in 8th edition now, by Arthur H. Robinson. I studied the 4th edition in college 1st round, and it was to the 7th edition in my 3rd round.

Robinson is no lightweight - he has a favoured and famous map projection named after him - often the gatefold map of the world in many high-end atlases , rounded developed cylindrical projection, as Drachel favoured, implying the world is not rectangular - as the ubiquitous (Gerardus) Mercator map does - comically distorting extreme latitude landforms - such as northern Siberia, the famous case of Greenland versus Iceland distortion, etc. Mercator - the map most shown in the media of the world - if rectangular , is made stricly for navigation - not geo-political or other uses.

Its use for navv'ing is un-paralleled, no pun intended, as its standard parallels are set at 40 degrees north as south, which is taught as a case for the Eurocentric view of the world at the time of his devloping the math of the projection in Germany, where the 40th parallel goes right through - by choice, and hence limits the distortion the most at that latititude. By coincidence, it goes right through Boulder Colorado,not far from Shelton's home, eg the source of the name of "Baseline road" in Boulder - combined with 40 degrees being the PlSS Survey system (sections, townships, 40 acres, etc.) abscissa (East-to-west) reference line intersecting with, and for, the 6th Principal meridian in Hebron Nebraska, from which all "STR" - (section, township, and range) land descriptions originate as a point 0,0, for the multi-state usage of one of several baseline and Principle meridian combinations in the US, escepting the colonial states, where metes-and-bounds still prevail. Essentially, from Ohio (where it was tested and developed) and westward.

Safe to say above, that Shelton's technique is heavily in use throughout a great portion of the world, and certainly America. WWII Air Force defense app's, and Jeppeson Aerial Maps stand by it. Nuff said.

Tom Pattersons "FlexProjector" - ostensibly to be a ground-breaking world-wide shaded relief model and projection specificaly for shaded relief, is not without rife precedent, no matter how great it is, and it looks great, but there are numerous projections well-suited and in use to this task since the advent of Remote Sensing by Satellite. The USGS Terra-Mapper project is just one, major example in use prior to this admittedly wel-done useful model Patterson espouses.

Thank you Char, for being the first corfidite to (admittedly, surprisingly....) show interest and find something OF interest in response to one of my enthusiastic waxing's on mapping, and without finding fault in SOMETHING I said... when I am citing it (mapping) wherever it seems to have a hook. Hal Shelton's house in this case, and I wish you all could see that house.......wow.....


~geo steve



I am deeply saddened to learn in one of the works/papers/googles you did on Shelton revealed that he died in 2004. I would have heard of this in my workplace, but that year I was deep in the thick of the earlier multitude of surgeries I had and lost track for a few years of breaking news in cartography/geodesy/surveying.

Your open-minded interest in shaded relief/Shelton was a demonstration of what I was taught is a Hallmark of "The inquisitive mind" - a sign of intellect. You get my "Professional Admiration Award" for the month !