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Born in 1803 at Rose in Vale, Cornwall, Henry James was educated at the grammar school in Exeter, and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; and was commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 22 September 1826. The following year he was appointed to the Ordnance Survey, on which he served mainly in Ireland. In 1843 James was appointed loal superintendent of the geological survey of Ireland under Sir Henry De la Beche. On 7 July 1846 James was transferred to Admiralty employment, and became chief engineer at Portsmouth with charge of the construction works in the dockard. On 8 September 1847 he was appointed to the commission investigating the use of iron in railway structures. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society on 30 November 1848, and an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 1 May 1849. James returned to the Ordnance Survey in 1850, and had his divisional headquarters at Edinburgh. In 1854 James married Anne Matson, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. On 11 July 1854 James was appointed superintendent of the Ordnance Survey.
Whilst in charge of the Survey, one-inch and six-inch scale maps were retained for the whole of the UK and the 1:2500
scale was adopted in addition for populous, cultivated, and mining districts. Also, related scientific investigations were undertaken: in 1856, observations were made with Airy's zenith sector on the sumit of Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh, to determine the mean specific gravity of the earth by triangulation. In 1860 James was knighted in recognition of his services. Also, In 1864-5 James arranged for a survey of Jerusalem, with the aim to make the city's water system less hazardous to pilgrims.
James also advocated a new process of map reproduction for which he conied the name of 'photozincography' (a chromocarbon photographic print of a small drawing was prepared and then transfered to zinc). This process allowed the Survey to keep pace with demands for maps in a variety of scales.