for title survey, which had reached its highest point at the end of the year 1972/73, accordingly dropped back towards the end of the year 1973/74 and despite some backlog some staff were diverted to other work. It is not envisaged that there will be any further staff reduction due to an expected increase in requests for title surveys in the developing areas of the New Territories.
CARTOGRAPHY
7.40
The addition of metric grids and conversion tables to the basic imperial scale mapping was completed and work on these scales was limited to essential revision. The design and specification for the new 1/750 1/1000 dual scale series was completed and production commenced for the Kowloon peninsula area. The first block of 49 sheets from Tsim Sha Tsui to Prince Edward Road is completed and will be circulated during April 1974. Experiments have proved that the 1/1200 New Territories series drawn to the most recent specification are capable of retaining reasonable quality on enlargement to 1/1000, when they can be recast directly to the new sheet lines. This process will probably be adopted and commence during 1974/75 and save much redrawing.
7.41
Cadastral and Land Registration work remained at the same reasonably high level of demand as the previous year, that is about 15% below the highest on record in 1972. Concurrently with the adoption of the 1/1000 basic mapping, all cadastral plans will be plotted on that scale and all land records must be transferred to 1/1000 basis.
7.42
Revision of the 1:2400 series was maintained to provide the basic data for new 1:5000 series (HM5C) which commenced production in March 1973. The series, intended mainly as base plans for Town Planning Office, has also aroused the interest of the Director of Military Surveys as a possible basis for security maps. Five of the nineteen sheet series were completed.
7.43 The specification for a new 1/7500 street map series (SM7D) to replace the 8 inch to 1 mile series was completed. Two of the fifteen sheet series are completed and two are near completion. Two years should see the completion of the series covering the entire urban area.
7.44
Production of the revised edition of the 1:10,000 L884 series in multi-colour dual-language form was discontinued due to its non-metric specification and relatively low demand from the public and official sectors. However, the base data is to be maintained for the production of the new 1:20,000 series by photographic reduction and recompilation.
7.45 The proposal to adopt the 1:20,000 (S.I.) scale for the main topographic map series, in place of Imperial series 1882 (1:25,000), was agreed between this Office, the Secretary for Security, the Director of Military Surveys and the Director of Education. It was the latter department which produced the most compelling argument for rapid change, due mainly to the need for conformity in the metrication of the education curricula. It is planned to produce 3 sheets during 1974 and thereafter 4 sheets per year aiming for completion by mid-1978.
It is
74