With trifling modifications the instruments devised by Durer, Newton, and Gallileo are in common use to-day.
Gradual improvements can be traced in the application of surveying to military and civil purposes, to mapping the campaigns of Louis XIV. and Marlborough, and laying down the forfeited estates in Ireland by William III., until in 1729 the first national survey on a large scale, for public and private purposes, was commenced in Savoy and Piedmont by Victor Amadie II., whereon nine years were occupied.
The method of large surveys obtained the name of Cadastre (Terrier map). It was suggested for France in 1763, but was only commenced in that country in 1793. The exact derivation and meaning of the French term "cadastre" are not free from dispute. Some authorities refer it to the verb "cadrer" to square or correspond with, all objects on a large scale, plan, or cadastre being shown in their true position and proportions, whereas in a mere topographical map similar accuracy is impossible, and certain features must need be exaggerated for the sake of distinctness.
The Dictionaire des Dictionaires on the other hand derives cadastre (formerly capdastre) from the mediæval-Latin word capitastrum (from caput "head," because formerly people were taxed, and afterwards property) and defines it as "a public register, containing the quantity and value of landed property, names of owners, etc., and which serves for the assessment of the tax on property in proportion to its revenue."
In the Recueil des Lois et Instructions sur les contributions directes, the cadastre is defined as "a plan from which the area of land may be computed, and from which its revenue may be valued."
This, there is no doubt, is the sense in which the word is used on the Continent, while in England it is taken as denoting generally a survey on a large scale.
It was not until long after the organization of the Ordnance Survey that it became a cadastral survey. Its organization at first was distinctly for military purposes, and the extension of its operations to cover all national needs only attained after years of discussion, and struggle for existence.
The credit of originating and carrying into execution the first tangible project for a systematic topographical survey of part of the kingdom is divided between two engineer officers, both at the time holding distinguished positions on the staff of the British army. The idea would seem to have followed close upon the sanguinary termination at Culloden of the "forty-five" rebellion, by which the fate of the house of Stuart was decided, in the reign of George the Second.
It was doubtless the outcome of that unhappy rising for it contemplated a general map of the Scottish highlands, precisely those parts of the country in which the heart and soul of the insurrectionary movement had all along centered. The difficulties of moving troops through these wild mountain districts, and without any clear knowledge of the passes connecting the glens and fastnesses, or of the correct distances intervening, would have been enormously lessened by the possession of good maps.
The survey of this wild and inaccessible region was undertaken in 1747 by Lieutenant-General Watson, an engineer, ably assisted by William Roy, who afterwards played a distinguished part in the earlier geodetic work of the Ordnance Survey.