The decision to produce maps covering the whole of the Roman Empire at a uniform scale of 1/1,000,000 was first made at a meeting of the International Geographical Union at Cambridge in July 1928. The proponent of the idea was O. G. S. Crawford, then Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey, and since he was also mainly responsible for its early development, the model adopted was that of the second edition of the O.S. Map of Roman Britain, but the physical base chosen was that of the International Map of the World, which was then in production. Considerable progress was made in the 1930s—it was in 1934 that the title Tabula Imperii Romani was adopted—but wars interrupted matters and it was not until 1957 that the work was formally taken over by the Union Académique Internationale. Professor G. Lugli became the first President of the Permanent Committee of the TIR, to be succeeded in 1968 by Professor J. B. Ward-Perkins; on his death in 1981 the Presidency was assumed by Professor E. Condurachi, with Professor G. Carettoni as Vice-President taking over most responsibility for the western half of the Empire.