![]() ![]() When put together on a wall, the map is 8 1/2 feet high and 6 feet across. After more than 20 years of work and many reverses, he produced the first geological map of the British isles, an enormous and beautiful affair titled ''A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales With Part of Scotland.'' It consisted of 15 sheets, published over several years but with a printed date of 1815, on a scale of five miles to the inch. ''Strata'' Smith was Britain's first great field stratigrapher and stratigraphic paleontologist. ![]() His interests and occupation made it possible for him, almost single-handedly, to change the way the English-speaking population of the world looked at the pile of fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers that embalm much of Earth's history. WILLIAM SMITH (1769-1839) was a surveyor, a largely self-taught land drainer and a superintendent for a company building canals to barge coal cheaply to rapidly growing English cities as the Industrial Revolution took hold. THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |