"[1] Bagley was a popular athlete at his university, and during a football game between Washington and Lee and the Virginia Military Institute, he was badly injured while playing guard, and was carried unconscious from the field.

In retrospect, the history, justification, technical information, documentary evidence, and mathematical formulas found in this bulletin make it one of the most important publications ever produced on the scientific uses of the panorama.

While most swing-lens panoramic cameras were used for scenic or group shots, Bagley found a way to use it for precise topographic measurements that would be used by geographers during this crucial period in Alaska's history.

B. Mertie (all of the Division of Alaskan Mineral Resources) pursued experiments towards designing and constructing a tri-lens camera for taking airplane pictures on a continuous roll of film and a rectifying printer for restoring the scale of the wing exposures.

"[1] After the war, he was placed in charge of an Engineer unit at Wright Field, Ohio, to further develop aerial photography for military applications, and to produce a nucleus of expert photogrammetrists.

During this time, Major Bagley produced a five lens camera, the T-3A, which could be used by topographers who already knew the distance between any two points, to then compute the remaining measurements and prepare a two-dimensional or planimetric map.

Study of these photographs enabled topographic engineers to overprint the site of enemy trenches and gun emplacements on existing base maps.

"In 1918, Major James W. Bagley (a USGS employee prior to U.S. entry into the war) was assigned to the European theatre to conduct field tests with an experimental three-lensaerial camera (Air Service History, Vol.

Although Bagley's team arrived in Europe too late to complete the planned trials under wartime conditions, the camera was evaluated after the Armistice to photograph sectors of the St-Mihel and Meuse-Argonne battlefields to assess its effectiveness for military reconnaissance.

Bagley's design was judged to be effective, although opinion favored the use of a longer focal length camera for military use (Air Service History, Vol.

Although the Wright Field detachment seldom exceeded two officers, six enlisted men and a few civilians, it gradually provided a nucleus of expert photogrammetrists.

Their description of their holdings records say: "The U.S. Army began aerial photography after World War I to free them from the time consuming and costly survey parties.

Major James W. Bagley was placed in charge of the small engineer detachment at Wright Field to supply aerial photography for military mapping.

The experiments of this time period produced methods of aerial mapping that opened up vast areas which would have been denied to a ground surveyor during World War II.

This collection contains bibliographies, correspondence, reports, articles, pamphlets and drafts of papers on aerial mapping and photography (one authored by Maj. James Bagley).

It also contains a dictionary of photographic terms (in German) and material on various cameras and other equipment including Adam Hilger Ltd.'s Survey Stereoscope; Fairchild's Solar Navigator; Brigg's Gyroscope Vertical Indicator; J.G.

Saltzman, Inc.'s, lighting and enlarging equipment; Messter Topograph; the Nistri Photocartograph and the Santoni Photogrammetric method (in both English and Italian); and the aerocartograph (blue prints and quadrangle mapping).

In an article published by Harvard University, Major Bagley commented on his research: ""An aerial photography unit has a two-fold purpose in an Air Corps during military operations.

Since the War, the developments in aerial photography have been, for the most part, along the lines of improved mapping cameras to give accurate results which can furnish pictures with more detail and correctness.

In 2007, the Army Geospatial Center added a plaque in his honor on the "Topographic Engineer Wall of Fame" at their headquarters in Ft. Belvoir, VA. Bagley married Agnes Stevens in 1911.

Three children also survive him: Samuel Stevens, who is on the family estate; Charles Thomas, a member of the faculty of the University of Tennessee; and Lucy Warren, a U.S. Department of Agriculture Extension Service employee and later a farmer in Vermont.