During the English civil war Oliver Cromwell, leader of theParliamentarian side discovered that he had great difficultyhitting anything with his artillery.He realised that the root of the problem was the very poorquality of the available maps of England. When his side won the warand he became a dictator he set up a government controlled andfunded organisation to carry out a proper survey of the country.Because it was intended for use by artillery, it was called theOrdnance Survey.The English decided that one civil war was more than enough, sothe artillery never needed these maps, but all sorts of otherpeople did. The O.S. still exists and keeps the maps up to date.Their maps are widely available and very popular.