Following my previous post I have been digging around archive.org for interesting spatial/ geographical related resources. A search for “geographic” yielded a number of back issues of the National Geographic Magazine. They date back as far as 1888 and contain some great images and maps. There are some real gems to be had, such as the “Scenes from every land” series (link to one here) that contain century-old photographs from every continent. I was also amused to see an article titled “Notes about ants and their resemblance to man“. I have shared a few of my highlights here.

The top map is taken from the 1907 edition of “Scenes from Every Land”. It shows a map of the world with its key trade routes. I suspect today’s equivalent would be much more complex such is the nature of contemporary global transport.

My final two favourites are taken from the 1894 edition of the National Geographic Magazine and illustrate climatic variables for the USA. The top shows the mean temperature for the hottest 6 weeks of the year, and the lower map shows the sum of daily mean temperatures above 6 degrees. Despite their age I really like the clarity and detail in these maps.

I would hate to think how long the map below took. Each standard station name has been re-written as an anagram.

My final favourite is a German version of the map. I like this because it made me really think about literal translations of the station names and how odd some of them really are.

Click here for the full collection.

So it fell to a number of enthusiasts to save the maps. I think the majority have been rescued and will be given new life as posters, artworks or simply keepsakes to be pulled out and admired on a rainy day. Rifling through the maps was a bit like going through an old photo album. Snapshots from the past, such as maps showing the narrow air corridor in 1970s Germany

or the size of the Haut Glacier d’Arolla glacier and famously retreating Unterer Grindelwladgletscher 75 years ago cast insights into a world before my time.

For something closer to home, I picked up some really nice maps from the “Phillips Series of Comparative Wall Atlases” (dated 1956) that show the summer and winter temperatures across the British Isles. I suspect that today we can add a couple of degrees to many of the contour lines drawn on the maps.

My favorite find is a couple of Ordnance Survey maps of the Greenwich Area dated 1917, though some lucky person had made off with the rest of London! Highlights from the maps include the “Thames Soap and Candle Works”

and detailed outlines of the housing.

If anyone knows what the colours mean I would be interested in hearing from them…

I think it is a real shame that such a great collection of maps has had to be broken up and I suspect LSE Geography will not be the last to send its maps to recycling. Still every cloud has a sliver lining and I am now trying to find the wall space to hang my newly acquired maps!

Thanks to Ollie O’Brien for the tip off about the map room giveaway.

Last Sunday I visited the Magnificent Maps Exhibition at the British Library. The exhibition has been hugely popular and I can see why- I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. The amount of information within the maps means I want to make a second visit. My favourite map overall was the Klenke Atlas for its sheer size (1.75 by 1.9 metres) and also the level of detail within its pages. The Frau Mauro World Map was one of the most interesting and it takes a while to get your head round due to its south facing orientation. Steven Walter’s “The Island” (image above) and the propaganda maps (especially the “Tea Revives the World” map) were highlights among the more contemporary maps featured.

I am not convinced that contemporary GIS will ever fully replace the beauty of hand-drawn maps. In a world full of spatial data, detailed, high quality, cartography is often put aside in preference to the speed and convenience of default colour palettes and layouts.  Magnificent Maps serves as a reminder that the visual portrayal of spatial data can be just as detailed and useful on paper (or parchment in many cases) as the electronic maps we have become accustomed to.

The exhibition closes on the 19th September 2010 and there are additional events throughout the summer (more info).

Judge for yourself:

New Tube Map

Old Tube Map

Maxwell Roberts has written an interesting blog on “Information Pollution and the Underground Map“.