James, SIR HENRY

James, SIR HENRY, director of the Geological Survey of Ireland and of the Ordnance Survey of the United Kingdom, was born near St Agnes in Cornwall in 1803. He passed in 1825 from the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, into the Royal Engineers. In 1844 he was appointed director of the Geological Survey of Ireland; in 1846 head of the Admiralty works at Portsmouth; in 1852 director of the Ordnance Survey of the United Kingdom; and in 1857 chief of the Statistical and Topographical Department of the War Office. He was knighted in 1860, and made major-general in 1868. He died at Southampton on 15th June 1877. From his pen came several works on geology, surveying, &c., including Ordnance Trigonometrical Survey of Ireland (1858) and Account of the Principal Triangulation of the United Kingdom (1864). By means of zinco-photography, a process which he invented in 1859, he produced fac-similes of Domesday Book (32 vols.) and of national MSS. of England (to Anne's reign), of Scotland, and of Ireland.