>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
>> Ralph Ehrenberg: My name is Ralph
Ehrenberg, I'm Chief of Geography
and Map Division Library
of Congress.
It is my honor to introduce the
Deputy Librarian of Congress.
Robert Dizard.
[ Silence ]
[ Applause ]
>> Good morning.
It's my pleasure just to take a
couple of minutes at the start
of the conference to welcome
you to the Library of Congress
for this conference devoted to the
history of 20th Century cartography
into the future of cartography.
As I'm sure many of you know,
maps and atlases have formed part
of the Library's collections since
Congress established the Library
in 1800 to provide its
members the information
and the knowledge required
to govern the new country.
In the very Act removing the
government to Washington D.C.,
there was a provision to establish
a library, and you're in the results
of that little provision right now.
When you look at the earliest
days of the Library of Congress
and the congressional
discussions about a library,
you see repeated references
to books and maps,
books and maps, books and maps.
Maps were there from
the very beginning.
They were here from
the very beginning.
And I would note, one of the first
rules of the Library was that,
while books could be loaned,
maps were not to be
removed from the library.
You see that very [inaudible], too.
During the past two centuries, an
initial acquisition of free maps
and an atlas has grown into a
very diverse collection of five
and one half million maps, atlases
and geospatial datasets
reaching back the 13th Century.
The Library of Congress
today, as it has in the past,
is responding to the changes
and challenges in cartography
as it becomes more and more
dominated by developments
in geographic information
systems and visualization tools
that have advanced spatial
analyses in mapping in ways
that few would have predicted
two or three decades ago.
We here at the Library are
currently collecting vast amounts
of digital geographic data
from all over the world,
especially for those hot spots
that continue to drive questions
of foreign policy, armed
conflict and natural disasters.
I just mentioned the emphasis on
maps in the congressional arena
at the very start of the Library,
and I can see, and I expect,
that the capabilities of
today's cartography will play an
increasingly important role in
the national legislative process.
There are tremendous opportunities
for cartography to help
in the legislative process
here on Capitol Hill.
Let me also take this opportunity
to mention a couple of current items
of note in the Geography
and Map Division
that I know you are
interested in, I think.
First, the Division's
Research Center
in the Library's Madison
Building is currently being
completely renovated.
Upgrades will include
high end GAS workstations
that will provide our patrons
with this digital data,
an interactive digitally connected
seminar room for study groups,
and a public lecture area
designed specifically
for presentations devoted to
geography and cartography.
That work is going
on right as we speak
and hopefully will be completed
in the next few months.
Second, the Congress has funded,
and we're nearing completion
of a construction of a secured
storage facility in the Geography
and Map Division for our extensive
collection of rare atlases.
I will also note that we are
working in a coordinated effort
to strengthen our GIS
capabilities across the Library,
as there are so many of our
divisions and offices here
that can use that capability
and need
that capability in their own work.
Over the next two days you will hear
about the modern history
of cartography.
You will get a close-up view of
how we arrived at this moment
in the long history of mapmaking,
and learn from the scholars gathered
here about the cartographers,
scientists, engineers,
geographers and visionaries
who turned the field
into what it is today.
More importantly, perhaps, you will
also hear about the future mapmaking
and how geographic analysis
is changing how we picture
and analyze our world, and how
these tools provide insights
into the conflicts, problems facing
an increasingly globalized world.
Before I close, I also
want to take an opportunity
to thank the Philip Lee Phillips Map
Society of the Library of Congress
for cosponsoring this event with
the Geography and Map Division.
The Phillips Society has been a
tremendous asset to the Library
since its establishment
in 1995, as the Geography
and Maps Division's
[inaudible] group.
We encourage your participation
in your nation's library
through support of
the Phillips Society.
And I just, again,
welcome you to the Library.
It really is our pleasure to
have you here for the conference.
Thank you.
Enjoy.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
>> Ralph Ehrenberg: Thank you, Bob.
I want to add that Mr. Dizard
has been a strong supporter
and facilitator of the project
to upgrade the Geography
and Map Division's Research Center
and to modernize our
GIS capabilities,
which we're very thankful for.
I also join Mr. Dizard in thanking
the Philip Lee Phillips Society
of the Library of Congress for
its funding of this conference.
The Society was established in
1995, as Mr. Dizard mentioned,
as the Geography and Maps
Division national support group
for the purpose of
stimulating interest
in the Library's cartographic
holdings
and to further develop
it's collections
through financial donations,
gifts and bequests.
Dizard named the honor of the
first and longest tenure chief
of the Geography and Map
Division from 1897 to 1924,
Phillips developed the practices and
procedures for acquiring, arranging,
and cataloguing the Library's
cartographic materials
that provided the basis for polices
that are still followed
by the Division.
Since the establishment
of the Society,
it's members have donated nearly
a million dollars to the Division.
Funds that have been used to
host conferences such as this,
purchase rare maps, publish
a quarterly newsletter
and print a [inaudible] series
of occasional papers that focus
on the history of cartography.
The Society has also recently
supported the publication
of an atlas of our Chinese map
collection, with the [inaudible]
which is available for examination
in our auditorium's lobby.
Please take time over
the next two days
to examine the Phillip Society's
newsletter and occasional papers
that you received in your packet.
And if you are interested
in continuing to receive
such publications, we
encourage you to fill
out the form and join the society.
We also have back copies of some
of our major [inaudible]
research papers in the lobby
and they're available
to you for free.
And if you have time,
examine those as well.
We'll begin the official
program now.
Our keynote speaker this morning is
distinguished Professor of Geography
at Syracuse University's
Maxwell School of Citizenship
and Public Affairs, and editor
of the Mammoth Cartography
in the 20th Century
, which is a --
which is scheduled for
publication in early 2015
by the University [inaudible]
Volume 6
of their historic History
of Cartography series.
Most of you probably know our
speaker through one or more
of his scholarly books with
proactive titles such as ranging
from -- that range from, How to
Lie with Maps , Heir Apparent:
How Meteorologists Learn to Map,
Predict and Dramatize Weather ,
and NO Dig, No-fly, No Go: How
Maps Restrict and Control .
Our speaker has been editor of
the American Cartographer ,
president of the American
Cartographic Association,
and adviser to the
National Research Council
and the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency,
and an academic member of the
Philip Lee Phillips Society
[inaudible] committee.
Please welcome Mark Monmonier, who
will speak on The Twentieth Century
as an Era in Map History: Tipping
Point or Merely Distinctive?
[ Applause ]
>> Mark Monmonier: Thank you, Ralph.
Let me get a good slide changer.
This talk has gone through kind
of a yo-yo revision sequence.
Three weeks ago I went
out to Madison,
Wisconsin for the semi-annual
editor's meeting for the History
of Cartography volumes, and as soon
as I got there I developed what
might have been a seasonal allergy,
or it might have been a cold,
or it might have been a virus.
It was a froggy throat
and it's lingered.
And two weeks ago I saw my physician
about another matter and she said,
well, it will probably go
away, we're not really certain.
Then it didn't go away after trying
a week of saline nasal drops,
and she prescribed a five-day
sequence of antibiotics,
figuring at this point, with
the conference coming up,
it might be good to try anything.
And apparently it worked, except
this morning I didn't get breakfast,
and didn't get coffee, and
[inaudible] dehydrated.
So anything goes.
Anyway, I said that
the speech was --
John Hessler [assumed spelling]
said, you know, try for something
between maybe 40 and 45 minutes.
And I figured, with a raspy
voice, you don't want to listen
to me too long, so I
shortened it a bit.
And then I got sort of a little
bit better and I made it longer
and then, you know,
sort of up and down.
So it's not quite as long
as it was, in any event.
Good morning.
Despite deep roots and the mapping
practices of the 19th Century
and earlier eras, the period
1900 through 2000 was a distinct
and coherent era in
cartographic history,
characterized by six
themes that, together,
revolutionized both the
form and the use of maps.
The first of these themes
is the Diverse Impacts
of Mapping on Society.
Whether driven by technology, state
format, imperialism or other forces,
mapping assumed new and greatly
enhanced roles in the 20th Century.
Notably in entertainment,
environmental protection,
growth management, weather
prediction, hazard mitigation
and other areas with
clear social impact.
Dramatic change is most notably
apparent in the transition
from paper to digital media, and in
related changes in data acquisition,
map compilation, representation
and dissemination.
This unprecedented upheaval
alone is a strong argument
for the 20th Century's
importance as a pivotal period,
and thus a coherent focus
of historical inquiry.
An argument particularly important
to me as editor of Volume Six
of The History of Cartography
, the 20th Century volume,
which the University of
Chicago Press promises
to release this coming spring,
during or before the annual meeting
of the Association of
American Geographers,
which chose Chicago
as it's 2015 venue.
If the books aren't ready on time,
my contributors and I promise
to storm the campus at Hyde Park.
Fingers crossed.
There's a one page, I guess
you could call it flyer
or handout there, just simply
announcing the imminent publication
of Volume Six.
To continue, the century witnessed
not only a relative democratization
of map use and associated
improvements
in cartographic literacy, but
also an increased awareness
of ethical considerations in both
the design and the use of maps.
By century's end, maps
and mapping were subject
to unprecedented questioning.
Counter maps were challenging the
authority of official delineations
and participatory mapping
was a recurrent theme
at academic conferences.
Indeed, as mapping practices
pervaded all parts of the globe
and all levels of society, mapping
became more important as a tool
for coping with complexity,
for organizing knowledge,
and for influencing public opinion.
And scholars recognized the
need, belatedly perhaps,
for a critical appraisal of the use,
the misuse and the effectiveness
of maps for exploration, regulation,
management, planning and persuasion.
Understanding the importance of maps
as tools also demands
a conscientious effort
to disentangle significant
demonstrable impacts
like those described in Volume Six
from assumptions based largely
on theory or conjecture.
During the 20th Century,
simplistic notions of the map
as an objective representation
of reality have given way
to a broader grasp of how
the maps respectability
as a scientific tool makes it a
target of political manipulation,
particularly apparent
in the geopolitics
of Nazi Germany and the Cold War.
The century also witnessed a
broader and deeper appreciation
of the diverse ways in which
maps can be read and understood.
A trend encouraged by the
often contentious intersection
of cartographic scholarship
and social theory.
Also apparent was a broader more
nuanced understanding of the role
of cartographic visualization
in the packaging of ideas,
explored under the interchangeable
rubrics propaganda maps
and persuasive cartography, which
mean pretty much the same thing.
The changing boundaries
between cartography
and other endeavors
were also apparent
in the growing participation
of humanists, literary scholars
and art historians at
academic conferences
on map use and map history.
As well as in the adoption of
the Geographic Information System
as an analytical tool in
archeology, environmental biology,
in public administration,
among other fields.
The second key theme
is Overhead Imaging.
Technologies for imaging earth
from aircraft, satellites, balloons
and rockets not only enhance
the efficiency of mapping
and surveillance, but also had
diverse scientific, social, military
and political impacts, exemplified
in the early 21st Century
by an increased use of unmanned
aerial vehicles as tools
for surveillance and
weapons of attack.
Improved technologies
for capturing image data
and extracting cartographic
features spearheaded a proliferation
of geospatial databases, which in
turn fostered a revitalized use
of maps in older more
traditional fields of application
such as energy exploration,
transportation and urban planning.
During the 20th Century
aerial mapping
and [inaudible] expanded
the reach of large
and intermediate scale
[inaudible] mapping so effectively
that [inaudible] no longer meant
the absence of any modern maps,
but a relative [inaudible]
detailed land use survey
and environmental assessments
essential
to the western world's
managed spaces.
In addition, remote sensing
of other heavenly bodies help
redefine exploration.
The third key theme of cartography
in the 20th Century is
the Electronic Transition,
where by the dramatic and
far reaching conversion
of geographic information
to electronic media
allowed the creation
of interactive and dynamic maps.
Although the products
of this technology were not
necessarily less expensive
or more reliable, the GIS
and the Internet radically
altered cartographic institutions
and lowered the skill
required to be a map author.
And satellite [inaudible] and mobile
telecommunications revolutionized
map-based [inaudible] finding.
Moreover, web based technology not
only undermined the traditional role
of the state in topographic
mapping, but also made zooming in
and out a widely pervasive
and [inaudible] interactive
means of changing map scale.
An extension to everyday use of the
elegant but static birds eye views
that had begun to proliferate
in the 19th Century.
Our connections with earlier periods
of map history are also apparent
in the increased role of
government in collecting mapping
and using scientific data.
The heightened concern for data
quality, the rise and decline
of truly mass production in the
20th Century and the conflation
of geographical, thematic
and topographic mapping
whereby users could toggle
between different layers
or coverage's while interactively
manipulating map scale.
Astute implementation
of digital technologies,
though never straightforward
and far from complete
by century's end had move
cartography farther beyond
description and delineation
and closer
to the more ambitious goals
of seeing and knowing.
The fourth key theme
is Maps and Warfare,
noteworthy because the longstanding
relationship between cartography
and warfare became every more
prominent in the 20th Century,
along with the greater efficacy of
precisely targeted cruise missiles
and the trickledown
of military technology
into civilian applications.
This development brought impulsive
aggression, the diversion of funds
from beneficial public investment,
and a reduce reliance on diplomacy.
Accompanying this technology
inspired reconfiguration
of military mapping were
new notions of territory
that a nation state might claim,
as well as new prohibitive
cartography's
to protect those claims.
Chief among these prohibitive
genres is aeronautical charting,
which arose during the 20th
Century to produce, reproduce
and regulate navigable air space and
later became a defensive strategy
through the declaration of
no-fly zones, actively enforced
in some cases, but largely
rhetorical in others.
Radar, a new mapping tool adept at
tracking aircraft, became a strategy
for enforcing other
kinds of no-fly zones,
including air space
restrictions above coastal waters
and dynamic temporary
flight restrictions, TFR's,
that could emerge or
expand suddenly in accord
with the movements of top officials.
The growth of prohibitive
cartography during the 20th Century
is also apparent in increased
maritime restrictions,
including the widening of most
territorial seas from three
to 12 nautical miles,
and the delineation
of exclusive economic zones, EEZ's,
which gave coastal nations
new authority over fishing
and subsurface mining with 200
nautical miles of their shoreline.
The advent of offshore drilling and
submarine warfare led to a broader,
more intensive, mapping of the sea
floor, as well as the discovery
of a multitude of sea
mounts, submarine volcanoes,
which triggered a round
of aggressive naming
reminiscent of the 17th Century.
Mapping had an inevitable,
if not indispensable,
role in dividing the seas and
shrinking international waters.
New mapping technologies
strengthened the bond
between national defense
and cartography
and underscored the
unintended consequences
of technological innovation.
Cold War fears of nuclear weapons
and intercontinental ballistic
missiles inspired the development
of artificial satellites, useful
not only for monitoring weapons
of development and launch sites,
but also for mapping terrain
and monitoring weather systems.
More exact representations of the
planets shape and gravity anomalies,
originally intended to guide
intercontinental ballistic missiles
toward precisely pinpointed targets
provided a more accurate [inaudible]
framework for geographic
information of all types,
civilian as well as military.
In addition, the prospect of low
altitude unmanned bombers guided
by the automated comparison
of altimeter readings
with on-board electronic maps,
led to digital elevation models,
which by century's end were
supporting civilian applications
as diverse as geographical mapping,
landscape architecture
and commercial forestry.
Moreover, the global
network of seismographs,
sensitive to underground explosions,
essential for ensuring compliance
with nuclear [inaudible] treaties,
proved useful in studying
continental drift
on modeling seismic rifts.
And finally, the global
positioning system, or GPS,
intended as a more reliable
way to route cruise missiles,
became a commonplace tool for
navigation, field measurement,
land survey, and location tracking.
More on that later.
A fifth key them is the Paradox
of Globalized Practices
and Customized Content.
While the globalization
of mapping technology
and cartographic practice are
diminished international differences
among cartographic products,
fuller customization of map design
and content fostered a broader
range of cartographic applications,
an unprecedented diversity
of map types.
Significant changes in the
form and appearance of maps,
and the increased prominence
of maps in the mass media.
The globalization imperative was
already apparent in commercial
and institutional arenas at
the end of the 19th Century.
Perhaps the quintessential example
of these is the International Map
of the World proposed
in [inaudible] in 1891
at the Fifth International
Geographical Congress
by [inaudible].
The movement toward global
standardization intensified
after World War II.
And new cartographic genres emerged
when distinct consumer communities
adopted standardized aesthetics
that ran from the highly formal
designs of a marine charts
and [inaudible] maps to the
aggressively informal look
of advertising maps
and political cartoons.
Prominent examples of international
standardization include soils maps
and the World Aeronautical Chart,
which outlived the comparatively
purposeless International Map
of the World.
The coexistence of
global standardization
and increased customization
is epitomized
by infectiously innovative
designs, instantly recognizable
to map collectors and
[inaudible] worldwide.
Distinctively functional examples
include the London Underground Map,
and Irwin Raisz's physiographic
diagrams.
Preeminently ideological
examples include the earth
from space perspective
of Richard Harrison,
who's dramatic illustration of
the proximity of the United States
and the Soviet Union fostered
the notion of air age globalism.
And the Peter's Map of the World,
which triggered a media [inaudible]
between Third World advocates
and professional cartographers.
Digital technologies
intensified these trends
but globalization often
superseded customization.
Although illustration
and map projection software
encouraged map authors
to customize their designs for
specific audiences, GIS software
and web-based mapping typically
constrained graphic style while
simultaneously supporting
flexibility
and content in geographic scope.
Maps produced using
ArcInfo and other products
of the Environmental
Systems Research Institute,
now known as ESRI, had a distinctive
look, epitomized by line symbols
in the key that resembled a giant
italic letter N. No less distinctive
was mapquest.com, which
introduced millions
of do-it-yourself online mapmakers
to the interactive zoom
in/zoom out graphic scale.
The growing ascendancy of
digital technologies hastened the
standardization of data
structured, and the adoption
of exchanged formats required
for efficient communication
among data providers,
software developers and mapmakers.
Stylistic [inaudible] increased
when new organizations emerged
to promote data sharing,
both internationally
and within governments.
By century's end online mapping
applications with a rich toolbox
of standardized symbols and layers
promised unprecedented customization
in content and relevance.
My sixth key theme is Maps as
Tools of Public Administration.
Although maps were used in urban
governance during the 19th Century,
they assumed greater importance
during the 20th Century in local
and national public
administration, regional planning,
and the representation
of national identity.
Key roles at the municipal
level include land use planning
and code enforcement, emergency
response, the delineation
in publication of election
district boundaries,
the delivery of regionalized
municipal services,
the assessment taxation and sale of
real property, the design management
and promotion of public
transit networks.
The analysis and control of crime.
The management of network
infrastructure
for electronic communication,
energy distribution,
water supply and sewage.
And the delineation of
historic districts established
to preserve a city's
architectural heritage.
Efficient municipal administration
came to depend heavily
on reliable large-scale maps.
At regional and national levels,
mapping activities evolved
during the 20th Century
to include map intensive
systems for monitoring weather
and water quality, for
predicting environmental disasters
and for planning and
orchestrating evacuations.
Numerical simulation models
became particularly important
when mitigating flooding,
seismic activity and other hazards
through land use regulation
and insurance.
Accompanying this increased usage
of maps was the growing awareness
among scholars of the maps value
as an instrument of a persuasion
of empowerment and resistance.
Despite numerous improvements
to mapping technology
during the 20th Century,
as well as an increased
pervasiveness of mapping activity,
maps became neither ubiquitous
nor democratized in the sense
of being fully and readily
available to all citizens.
A careful reading of the
historical record will reveal
that progress was seldom steady,
advances were sometimes troublesome,
and rarely complete,
and consequences were
often unpredictable.
These caveats in no way diminished
the century's significance
as a momentous epic in map history.
To underscore the change that
occurred between the years 1900
and 2000, I call attention
to the structural differences
between Volume Six of The History
of Cartography and earlier
volumes in the series.
Volumes One through Three, as
many of you know, were comprised
of relatively long narrative essays,
in contrast to the
encyclopedic structure adopted
for the later volumes.
Because the history is
primarily a reference work,
the encyclopedic format
is most efficient
and also the most effective way
to accommodate the explosion
of mapping activity after
1650, roughly the beginning
of the European enlightenment.
In designing tables of contents
for the last three volumes,
the editors adopted a conceptual
structure based on the notion
of [inaudible] of mapping progress.
This notion of modes is
based in turn on the belief
that how maps are made and used
and to what ends is arguable
the most revealing basis
for sorting cartographic artifacts
in the categories for
historical analysis.
Competing categorizations
include [inaudible]
which is both the lynchpin
of cartographic theory
and the key characteristic
of any map.
Even so, categories based on scale
are two course and internally vary
to sustain a broad range
of meaningful interpretations
and conclusions.
Similarly limited are
categorizations based upon weather
the mapmaker is a governmental
or a private sector entity,
whether the map is circulated
on paper or electronically,
or whether replicated
images were copied by hand,
engraved on copper plate
or lithographic stone
or transferred photographically.
Although the reproduction
method leaves distinctive marks
on the artifact, these differences
in appearance are less socially
and intellectually significant than
differences among cartographic modes
such as property mapping, marine
charting and geodetic surveying.
The concept of cartographic modes
was introduced by Matthew Edney
in 1993 as a framework for
studying the development
of European cartography between 1500
and 1850, which includes the age
of discovery and the
rise of capitalism.
His scheme initially consisted
of nine [inaudible] modes
of mapping practice -- of nine
modes of mapping practice described
as sets of cultural, social,
and technological relations,
which defined cartographic practices
and which determined the character
of cartographic information.
Although these modes overlap and
interact, each has a typical range
of map scales as well
as distinctive forums,
innovations, and user communities.
Celestial mapping with
ties to astronomy
and astrology looks heavenward
and has the smallest scales.
Small scale maps are also the
most characteristic product
of geographical mapping, which
summarizes special knowledge
for the entire world and
it's regional subdivisions.
Geodetic mapping, which measures
the size and shape of the planet,
is a continental or global
endeavor most conveniently depicted,
if at all, on small scale maps.
Even so, it's most important
products are the highly precise
triangulation networks that provide
a geometric framework for the large
or medium scale maps generated
by topographic mapping,
which focuses on the representation
of place, and the earth's surface.
And by urban mapping, a historically
important endeavor focused
on cities.
When measurement is no less
basic to property mapping,
which promotes land ownership
with large scale representations.
And to boundary mapping, which
delineates national territories
and their provinces on
medium or small scale maps.
A marine charting, which produces
small scale maps of the seas
and medium scale maps or harbors,
interfaces with topographic
mapping along the coastline.
And finally, thematic mapping,
which encompasses the broadest range
of scales, typically exploits
topographic maps, geographical maps
and marine charts as
spatial frameworks
for plotting natural
or social phenomena.
As Edney observed, these
modes represent a convergence
of mapping practice around 1500,
followed by a marked
divergence before 1800.
By the 16th Century the collective
emergency of mercantilism, printing
and the [inaudible] of land and the
modern territorial state had led
to four distinct modes,
charting, [inaudible],
small scale chorography, place
mapping, and large scale topography,
which by the early 18th
Century had amalgamated
into a relatively [inaudible]
mathematical cosmography,
inspired by the scientific
enlightenment and exemplified
by systematic and detailed national
surveys like the mapping of France
by the [inaudible] family.
Fragmentation into the
aforementioned modes
by 1800 reflects the
increased political, economic
and intellectual activity
of European society.
Edney's scheme also included
four institutional endeavors
that cut across multiple modes.
Military cartography, for instance,
employs geographical maps
for strategic planning.
Topographic maps for
tactical operations.
And marine charts for
naval activities.
At local as well as
[inaudible] or national scales,
administrative cartography
intersects property mapping,
thematic mapping, topographic
mapping and urban mapping.
Of the map trade, which became
map publishing after printing
and engraving technologies
drastically expanded the
cartographic marketplace
in the 16th Century,
encompasses the commercial
distribution of maps of all types.
And map collecting by institutions
and individuals brings together maps
useful for military intelligence,
general reference and
scholarly research.
And in the 20th Century
in particular antiquarian
dealers have counted rare
and [inaudible] old maps
as aesthetically attractive
investments.
Technological advances in the 20th
Century required two additional
modes of cartographic practice.
Overhead imaging, whereby
aircraft and satellite platforms
and diverse imaging technologies
vastly increased cartographic
coverage and content.
And dynamic cartography,
whereby interactive
and animated displays offer
comparatively complete
and often engaging representations
of temporal or complex [inaudible].
In addition, academic
cartography emerged
as a distinct institutional
endeavor,
focused on the systematic scholarly
study of not only the design
and production of maps, but
also the cultural connotations
and societal impacts
of mapping activities.
Two overarching trends illustrate
how the six aforementioned themes
in these two new modes
of cartographic practice
characterize the distinctiveness
of the 20th Century.
The second of these trends
merits mention here, and if time
and stamina were available
I would be pleased
to cover it in greater detail.
It's impacts are obvious to anyone
who regularly watches
television weather programs
and to public officials
or scientists concerned
with coastal flooding, wild wind
fire, groundwater contamination,
air pollution or nuclear meltdown.
It's important as a strategy
for extending the maps'
timeframe forward into the future.
The first of these trends is
more interesting, or to me,
as a social scientist, and
more germane to the notion
of [inaudible] tipping point,
the subtitle [inaudible] insofar
as the intensification of
prohibitive cartography as obvious
if not ominous socio-cultural
overtones.
Maps intended to restrict
movement or activity emerged
as a distinct dimension of
map use sometime after 1900,
when they increased markedly in
variety, pervasiveness and impact.
Although this intensification
has roots in Roman property maps,
partly intended to
[inaudible] trespass,
any map with boundary lines
delineating a territory as small
as a farm or as large
as a nation's state,
is fundamentally a restrictive map.
Familiarity with these longstanding
uses likely underlies an expectation
that a wider more intensive use
of prohibitive maps would
be understood and accepted.
Factors underlying this
expansion include advances
in transportation technology,
and public administration,
as well as an increased
wariness of urban growth
and hazardous geographical
environments.
Whereas maps portraying
historic districts
and a marine protected areas
are necessarily prohibitive,
recreation maps, nautical
charts and other maps intended
to facilitate access in travel
often include restrictive elements.
Prohibitive elements
are now apparent in most
of the cartographic [inaudible]
modes and institutional practices.
Property mapping --
got ahead of myself.
Property mapping, for instance,
must now cope with the diverse array
of utility easements, rights
of way and encroachments,
all of which impose or
suggest restrictions on the use
of real property, and all of
which became more pervasive
in the 20th Century.
In a too dissimilar vain, boundary
surveying rows in prominence
with the scramble for African
colonies in the late 19th Century.
Topographical surveying,
which refers to comparatively
detailed maps about places,
integrates restrictive elements,
such as political boundaries
and property ownership information
with other geographical features.
This example from a 1992 U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency map
of the West Bank relates
settlements, roads,
and terrain to a broad and
contentious border zone,
vague in shape and
labeled No Man's Land.
The blue areas are
Israeli settlements,
which in the highlighted
area increased
in number between 1993 and 1992.
Urban mapping, which
is closely [inaudible]
with topographical surveying refers
to the mapping of entire
urban places.
It's importance here lies
largely in its contribution
to the multi-mode institution
administrative mapping.
Even so, a municipal boundary
is a prohibitive map in so far
as it reflects activities not
allowed within the city proper,
or services available
only to city residents.
In this example from
a landmark decision
by the United States Supreme Court,
the justices ruled unanimously
that a city could not redraw
it's boundary to exclude most
of its African American residents.
Geographical mapping refers
to medium to small-scale maps
or regions or larger units,
including the entire world.
It thus includes [inaudible]
finding and travel maps,
most notably the Aeronautical Chart,
a distinctively 20th
Century innovation.
Indeed, few prohibitive maps
are as historically significant
as the Aeronautical Chart.
Before World War I some European
nations had equated the skies
with the high seas, to which
everyone had unimpeded access.
But by war's end, air space
sovereignty was largely linked
to national boundaries.
This is one of numerous instances
of what I call borrowed
borders, repurposed borders.
Former prohibitions did not appear
on U.S. Aeronautical
Charts until the late 1920s.
The slide shows the symbol
sanctioned by the U.S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey, which
[inaudible] assigned responsibility
for federal aeronautical
charting in 1926.
Prohibited air space was
represented in red by a pattern
of closely spaced diagonal lines.
There's an excerpt from
a 1935 sectional chart
that shows a vast restricted area
over the Upper Chesapeake Bay,
down range from the army's Aberdeen
Proving Grounds and firing range.
A primary center for
developing and testing ordinance.
Safety was a greater
concern than espionage.
As the century progressed,
aeronautical charts evolved
to include dynamic maps
showing temporary restrictions
in the vicinity of special
events such as air shows,
as well as the mountain
retreat of Camp David
when the President was in residence.
Complex and often [inaudible]
restrictions embedded
in contemporary aeronautical charts
reflect a historically significant
transition of the map -- the map as
a tool for exploration, discovery
and navigation to maps as
comparatively complex instruments
with roles that include public
safety, growth management
and environmental protection.
Thematic mapping, which refers
to the complication of medium
to small scale distribution
maps for physical
and social phenomena include
census maps and geologic maps,
which provide a basis for
cartographic restrictions embodied
in land use zoning and
flood plain management.
In seismically active parts of the
United States, fault lines taken
from geologic maps were
repurposed for regulating land use.
Marine charting, which defined
high and low water shorelines
in the 19th Century
provided baselines
for extending territorial claims
seaward during the 20th Century.
The most notable examples are maps
delineating claimed, disputed,
or agreed maritime
boundaries intended
to limit fishing activity
in seabed mining.
This example shows the maritime
boundary negotiated between Cuba
and the United States in 1977.
They were talking in 1977.
Conventional nautical
charts, I should add,
typically include prohibitive
elements.
By its nature, administrative
mapping offers the greatest
potential of any mode for
prohibitive cartography.
Let me offer one example.
An excerpt from the pioneering New
York City zoning map introduced
in 1916.
Symbols were assigned to streets
because both sides of the street
within a block shared
the same restrictions.
Few municipalities were willing
to adopt zoning until 1926,
when the Supreme Court ruled
that cities could use
cartography to control land use.
This slide shows the same area
on a present day zoning map,
which has many more categories
and is available online.
When many cities also have historic
district maps, delineating areas
with strict controls on paint color,
exterior modifications
and general appearance.
Administrative maps regulate
activities as diverse
as a commercial signage,
wildlife conservation
and agricultural irrigation.
No less prominent is
military mapping,
which encompasses the diverse
range of activities related
to warfare and national defense.
Prominent among the
prohibitive applications
of military mapping is the no-fly
zone declared over northern Iraq
in April 1991 by the
United States, Britain,
and France to provide a safe
haven for Iraqi [inaudible].
This web map disseminated
by the U.S. military also shows
the southern no-fly zone declared
in August 1992 to protect dissident
Shia Saddam Hussein's air force.
Inconsistent enforcement
made this map a little more
than a rhetorical instrument, but
graphic depictions were useful
in calling attention
to what was treated
as a humanitarian intervention.
By contrast, no-fly
zones were used --
were rigorously [inaudible] during
NATO peace keeping operations
in Bosnia in the mid-1990s.
Perhaps the most ominous form
of prohibitive cartography is
the electronically enforced
"no-go" area, enabled
by the integration
of the Geographic Information
System, the GPS
and the wireless network.
Applications include
enforcing orders of protection
against abusive spouses, banning
sex offenders from school zones
and playgrounds, and finding
lost pets, lost children
and wandering Alzheimer's patients.
Despite these apparent benefits,
ominous threats to liberty
and privacy demand a healthy
skepticism of utopian claims
for geospatial technologies.
To sum up, the hundred
year period that started
in 1900 witnessed a cartographic
revolution as dramatic
as that inspired by the invention
of printing or the development
of scientific instruments
and applied mathematics.
Whether these changes
collectively make the 20th Century,
or at least it's last third,
a tipping point is problematic
in so far it is hardly clear whether
the tilt is toward greatly enhanced
personal freedom, massively
increased government
or corporate control, or a blurred
commingling of maps with other forms
of information and technology.
But potential is here, surely,
for the map, [inaudible] defined
to become more than
just a rhetorical
or representational
means of control.
Thank you.
[ Silence ]
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
What's that?
[Inaudible] questions?
Yes, down here.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
There's [inaudible] microphone.
>> Oh, I'm sorry.
Would you say that was there any
point that U.S.S. in the last 20,
30 years of the 20th Century
that would with the advent of GIS
and locational technologies
that mapping went from being
of less interest to corporate and
governmental leadership to a point
that it becomes much more
valued by centers of power
because what you can do with it?
And I have been too many
corporations that they --
leaders get excited by GIS
and throw tons of money at it,
where prior to the advent
of that technology what little
mapping they did was relegated
to a back room.
Was there any year that
you would say would be kind
of going back to the tipping point?
>> Mark Monmonier: Tipping point,
was there any particular year?
I can't think of one.
I mean, you know, probably
it would be possible maybe
to do kind of a content analysis.
But you're talking about
a situation in which --
I'm not certain I fully
understand the question.
But there's a situation where
they had been very much interested
in geographic information and
they became less interested in it,
or they became more interested
in it as a means of control.
I mean, if you can elaborate a
little on that, I'd appreciate it.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
An example might help.
>> Hello. For instance, when I
was a student in the early '80s
and for the mid-80s it
didn't seem to be a lot
of interest across the university.
In the early 2000s in my job
I visited many universities
across the country and
departments from archeology
to biology were grabbing onto
GIS and geographic technologies
because they saw it as a powerful
tool and interesting thing.
Which it was before,
GIS is just a tool.
It's not [inaudible], but people who
are not that familiar into geography
and cartography kind
of their eyes lit up
and they started throwing
a lot of money at it.
And I saw the same thing also
in several corporate spheres
which I didn't see back
in the '70s or '80s.
>> Mark Monmonier: Well, I mean,
this certainly did take universities
by storm very definitely
starting in the early 1990s.
And I don't really think
that the enthusiasm
for it has lessened
into the 21st Century.
I mean, you probably, you
know, might find some instances
where there might have been
a disillusionment, maybe,
because it was over sold, but
I think for every instance
of that you probably would
find new applications.
I know one of the things
in our department,
we have a community geographer.
And this position started
out as being sort
of a one time community
engagement or initiative
on the part of the university.
Two years ago the [inaudible]
actually became a regularized tenure
track faculty line.
But the geographer, Janelle Ellen
Robinson [assumed spelling],
does a lot of work with local
not for profit organizations
and she has a lot of
interns working with her.
And while there has been I think
a recognition that some of the not
for profits are maybe sort of
over-awed by the complexity,
let's say, of the large
GIS software systems.
There seems to be a lot of
enthusiasm for some of the things
that they might be able to do with
such applications as Google Maps,
which also, I mean, has
extensions which allow you
to do address mapping, and
you can go from address maps
to [inaudible] distribution maps.
And I think this technology
is going to be with us
for the long -- for a long time.
In the corporate world, you know,
it has become incredibly valuable,
especially when linked with GPS.
And when I think, let's say,
of organizations like UPS
or FedEx would use it to
keep track of their trucks,
to keep track of when packages
are delivered, to also keep track
of how many turns the driver makes
and try to create optimized routes.
Now, you know, whether this
kind of application is going
to reach some kind of a plateau,
I think it will at some point.
My general sense is that
we're not there yet.
I don't think we're going
to see anything like this.
Does that help?
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Okay. Other questions?
>> My name is George
Shalew [assumed spelling].
My question is, you've spent
a lot of time preparing
for this keynote address.
I would like to have your answer,
tipping point or merely distinctive.
Your answer to the question.
>> Mark Monmonier: Wait a minute.
My answer to the question
of the tipping point.
You're not going to like
this answer is I don't know.
I mean, you know, seriously, I
mean, I think that we're at a stage
where things can go in a
variety of different directions.
If you want to get, you know,
a very [inaudible] scenario,
I can foresee a situation in which
human beings are chipped, okay?
And I think they might
voluntarily buy into this
because there would
be lots of advantages.
It's a technology which could be --
which could be abused, obviously.
And I think there is some
tendency, I think, toward --
what's the term --
creeping acquiescence.
And, you know, you can see, for
instance, I mean if you look
at the problem let's say with
abusive spouses who violate orders
of protection, you know, it
really is a good idea if it works
to actually have something
where if they go
out of bounds you can not
only notify authorities,
but also inject a [inaudible]
into their bloodstream [laughter].
Now, having said that, there is
a notion that this technology,
as ominous as it might
seem, isn't going to work.
We have a case in Syracuse, I
guess, about a year and a half ago
where there was a fellow named David
Renz [assumed spelling] who was
under indictment for
possessing child pornography.
He was on home release,
pending, I guess, sentencing,
and they had a GPS monitoring
unit strapped to his ankle.
And he was a little bit
technologically savvy,
and he figured a way to
sort of cut the bracelet,
but to sort of do this
sort of intermittently,
which then sent a signal to the
monitoring station in Denver
that there might be, you know,
some sort of technological glitch;
some sort of a false positive.
So the signals tended to be ignored.
And then one night he
basically slipped his bond
and went out on a rampage.
He attacked a school librarian
and her teenage daughter.
Killed the librarian
and raped the daughter.
And, you know, this
caused a big scandal,
obviously with the federal
district attorney --
the federal attorney's office, which
was responsible for this monitoring,
and for the firm involved.
And there is a tendency sometimes
to think that technology, you know,
it can be very restrictive,
but there's also a situation
where the belief in it working,
you know, might be misplaced.
In some cases it can be an
electronic marginal line.
Does that more or less
answer your question?
I might not have answered it,
but at least I think you can say
that maybe I have addressed it.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
>> -- here.
Alice had some --
>> Mark Monmonier: Oh, hi, Alice.
>> Hi [laughter].
You talked about the
International Map of the World
and you characterized it as
purposeless, and I sort of saw
that in the earlier days as trying
to unify the mapping
around the world.
Secondly, as a result of the
International Map of the World,
in the 1970s I know that
in some map collections
that were serving the
public the International Map
of the World sheets
provided coverage for,
especially Third World areas,
that you just didn't have
in any map collection in general.
And so it was a helpful close-up,
not anymore but back in the '70s,
a helpful close-up for say
the central African mapping
or something.
So IMW, was it really purposeless?
>> Mark Monmonier: I'm sort of
thumbing through my notes here.
I thought that I might have prefaced
that by saying comparatively
pointless.
It obviously was not
purposeless; it had a purpose.
But it certainly did not live up to
the, you know, rather broad claims
that had been made for it.
It was useful, definitely, as a
reference map, as it was useful
in many situations as
a compilation tool.
I think the fact that the series
languished was never really
completed probably in as
ample evidence of the fact
that it's purpose was
certainly not abundantly clear.
But I understand what you're saying.
That's a good point, but
I'll go back to what I said,
namely that it was comparatively
pointless, certainly in terms
of the World Aeronautical Chart,
which had a very focused
functionality.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Oh boy. Yeah.
I could give probably a
lecture twice as -- okay.
It was conceived, I'm trying
to think, back in the '70s,
believe David Woodward and
Brian Harley [assumed spelling].
And [inaudible] we officially
refer to him as J.B. Harley.
[Inaudible] Brian.
Were in Britain near where
he lived, Devon, I believe,
and they were out for a walk
and they thought it might
be a great idea to have sort
of a general history of cartography.
Excuse me.
Brian had been working on a
multi-volume history of mapping
of I think the American Revolution
or let's say early [inaudible]
American maps and they decided
that they would expand this.
And they were thinking originally
about four volumes, and it was going
to stop, I think, at the year 1900.
And there was a lot of
discussion about it.
This was intended, by the
way, to be published by 1992,
the 500th anniversary of the
Columbian discovery of America.
And that probably was
an ominous sign
that this project is going
to take way too long.
They started with Volume One.
When was Volume One published?
I [inaudible] keep these figures.
I think 1987, somehow that
date sticks in my mind.
And that certainly set the general
format for the narrative essays.
And Brian's introductory essay
there, I think, you know,
established a revolutionizing
sort of framework or statement
about what the history
of cartography might do.
They realized at this point
that, oh boy, you know,
we really had not been
planning on anything
to cover the lesser developed world.
And they, in the process
of compiling Volume One,
they identified a number of
scholars that would allow them
to expand coverage to a
greater part of the world,
and this became Volume Two.
But Volume Two became
not just one book.
I mean, Volume One is
about maybe yay thick.
Volume Two is three books, one
relatively large, including,
you know, Africa, indigenous
societies, indigenous societies
in America, certainly Asia.
I mean, this became, you know, huge.
And then they -- well, Brian had
a heart attack I think in 1995,
and he was out of the picture.
And David decided to plow
forward with Volume Three.
For Volume Two with
the multiple books,
they used associate editors
and assistant editors.
David was pretty much running
the show for Volume Three,
concerned with the Renaissance.
He decided to recruit editors to
help with the remaining volumes.
And for Volume Four he
recruited Matthew Edney,
Mary Pedley [assumed spelling] and
Graham Burnett [assumed spelling]
who was a young historian trying to
get tenure at Princeton University.
And as soon as Graham got tenure
at Princeton he bailed out.
I guess association with the
history is a valuable credential
up to a point.
I was engaged to work with
Volume Six very early on,
back when Brian was still around.
And I can recall -- so this would
have been I think late '80s,
and I can recall, you know, actually
working out a table of contents,
which was designed along the lines
of the older narrative essays.
And it became a bit daunting because
there's so many different things
that you can have as chapter
titles, what are you going to cover,
what are you not going to cover.
And this ultimately is one of
the things that propelled us
into the encyclopedic format.
I was offered a contract, I think,
in 1997 or 1998 by the Press,
which basically offers
contract to the editor.
Shortly thereafter
David had contracts
for Matthew, Mary and Graham.
The original plan was for Volume
Four to be out before Volume Six.
That didn't happen, obviously.
One of the reasons for that is
that Volume Four was complicated
by a larger number of non-English
speaking authors whose entries
required translation.
It was thought that the
generally advisable strategy was
to have people write in their own
language and then get it translated.
And having worked with both modes
in Volume Six, I think there's a lot
of wisdom there when --
I mean, there are some people
who are non-English speakers
who actually are quite fluent
[inaudible] English, both orally
and in print, others not so much.
The entire process
just took way longer
than anybody thought it would.
We got -- we had applied to the
National Science Foundation I think
for a six year grant that
was intended to start
around the year 2000,
and this was going
to help us take Volume
Six all the way through.
Volume Six was figured
to be more closely allied
with the National Science
Foundation,
whereas Volume Four
more closely allied
with the National Endowment
for the Humanities.
Well, at that point that
we had sent the proposal
in we were using the
narrative essays format
and we had a tentative outline
and it didn't fly that well
with the external reviewers
that it was sent to,
and that looked like a setback.
And one concern was, well, how many
people are there really out there
who could really help
and write the History
of Cartography in
the 20th Century ?
So I thought and figured that, well,
this is a problem that
the NSF identified.
I looked at what the NCGIA was
doing at the University of Maine,
State University of
New York at Buffalo
and most importantly UC Santa
Barbara where they had run a number
of initiatives and I thought that it
would be maybe possible for the NSF
to sponsor something called the
Exploratory Essays Initiative.
And the idea here was to attract
11 scholars who would be recruited
to write 10,000 word essays on some
aspect of the history of cartography
in the 20th Century and
to recruit, in some cases,
people who really had
not had much experience
in writing cartographic history.
Some of them had, obviously.
And that was a three year
grant and that worked.
One of the peoples essays
didn't quite pass muster,
but this was published as a
special issue of Cartography
and Geographic Information Systems.
In the process of doing this
we realized, and I say we,
David and myself, when Matthew and
Mary realized that there's no way
in which we can do the last
three volumes using the narrative
essays model.
The history of cartography
is way too varied.
If we're working on -- if what we're
working on is a reference work --
intended as a reference work,
a first resort, we really need
to make this into something
like an encyclopedia.
Now, it happened that I think around
'98 or '97 we had a conference here
at the Library of Congress and the
Library of Congress was the sponsor,
the National Endowment for the
Humanities provided travel funding,
and it was sort of
like a, what, three --
two and a half day conference.
Basically the Geography [inaudible]
of Library of Congress focused
on cartography in the 20th Century.
And we were fishing for
ideas and fishing for authors
who might be recruited to
actually write chapters.
But at that time we were still
thinking about the long essays mode.
Well, David died in
2004, I think, yeah,
but before he died we realized
we're going to have to switch
to the encyclopedic format.
After the Exploratory Essays
Initiative, which was successful,
we applied to the NSF and got a five
year grant -- almost said contract.
Contract, we'd really be in trouble.
A five year grant that was going
to help us finish Volume Six.
Well, obviously that
hasn't happened.
As a matter of fact
we're just winding up --
this past August we wrapped year
five of a second five year grant.
The University of Chicago Press had
experience with the earlier volumes.
They had never done anything
like encyclopedia on this order.
There was a reference editor,
Linda Halverson [assumed spelling],
had some experience, she had
worked with Oxford University Press
and she was extremely helpful to us
in devising something called
hierarchically oriented conceptual
clusters, and this basically is
a theory that enabled us to try
to identify clusters of topics.
And one of the rationales
in doing this was to sort
of lay the whole thing
out, also building this
on Matthew Edney's Modes
of Mapping Practice.
And one of the things this helped
us do was to try to recognize gaps,
and also to recognize viable entry
titles for the history itself.
We began to issue invitations to
write for the encyclopedia in 2006,
and I can recall we had
an electronic system set
up to generate paper,
letters of invitation,
and we were using FileMaker
Pro to keep track
of both the entries and the authors.
There was what was called the
contributor side of the database
and the entry side of the database.
And this database -- you know,
if you ever have to start
with something like this, I
would start with Excel myself,
it's much more user-friendly,
much more controllable.
This system, when we got it
going, was extremely valuable,
but they had to go out
twice to get a consultant
to actually make the thing work.
And we decided that the
first invitations would go
out to contributors
who would be asked
to write the shorter 500 word
entries, plus any additional ones.
And we were sending them
paper letters of invitation.
And the system wasn't quite ready,
so basically I had a template
and I had a file with
addresses and I copy, pasted in
and I generated these on letterhead,
and one marathon afternoon did a lot
of folding of papers and stuffing
of envelopes and pasting of stamps.
We really -- if you try something
like this with no experience,
we had thought that we
would be able to get support
for a full-time editorial
coordinator at Syracuse,
a full-time line, and
this was advertised
through the University
Human Resources office.
And David was reasonably confident
that some high-tech firms would
be able to support lines like this
for Volume Four, Volume
Five and Volume Six,
and that support never came forth.
It's very difficult to
get people to contribute
to [inaudible] historical projects.
Where would we be without
the NSF, Lord knows.
Where would we be without the
National Endowment, Lord knows.
There were a few other
smaller foundations
that helped out quite a bit.
Obviously there were lots
of other [inaudible].
I mean, the Library of
Congress in providing access
to the collections here
was enormously valuable.
We began to invite contributors, and
because -- well, the idea of people,
when they were invited,
they were given a due date.
We didn't use the term deadline.
Due date seemed to be sort
of a milder form of deadline.
Well, it turned out that some
of the entries started arriving.
I never did get a release time
to work on the thing, so I had a,
you know, full two
course in the fall,
two course in the spring
teaching load.
We did get funding for a graduate
assistant, which was helpful.
But when the entries
started arriving we realized,
among other things, that the
[inaudible] was not quite always
as pristine as we would like, so
this required a lot of rewriting.
In the process, people
then asked for extensions
and we gave them extensions
because there was probably no point
in demanding that, "You said
you would do it by this date,
it's not here, where the heck
is it," so they got extensions
and basically things began to
run on and on and on and on.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Eventually 529.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
And authors, over 300
contributors and co-contributors.
And, you know, when you're working
with that many different authors
it becomes a complicated operation.
And --
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Okay. Yeah.
So I think I sort of filled my time.
>> You did.
Yeah.
>> Mark Monmonier: Okay.
Well --
[ Applause ]
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
>> Ralph Ehrenberg: Mark put out
brochures, so take a look at that.
[Inaudible] it's monumental work
and it's Volume Six of the History
of Cartography , just
a great contribution
to the history of mapping.
Now I want to turn the podium
over to our next program,
and Wes Brown will chair this.
I just want to say that this
conference was Wes' original idea.
A year ago he suggested to
me when we we're looking
for the next conference to do one
on the 20th Century, and, of course,
that was of very much interest
to me and to John Hessler
who organized the whole program.
And I want to thank John for
this, he did a tremendous job.
But, Wes.
>> And our first speaker
is Dr. Stephen Hornsby.
He's Director of the
Canadian-American Center
and Professor of Geography
at the University of Maine.
He's published extensively on the
northeastern part of North America,
and he has so many credits that
I'm not going to go through them.
Rather, I'll just mention a few.
His latest book, Surveyor's
of Empire: Samuel Holland,
J.F.W. Des Barres and the Making
of the Atlantic Neptune,
just won three awards.
And soon to be released, Historical
Atlas of Maine , and my favorite,
American Pictorial
Maps in cooperation
with the Library of Congress.
Now, pictorial maps are so cool.
I started collecting these
things quite a few years ago
and I can't wait to hear
what we have to say.
Now, Dr. Hornsby, he's taking
his love of maps a little too far
because in June he will
marry Anne Kelly Knowles,
well known for her work in
historical GIS and recently profiled
in the Smithsonian magazine.
So talk about people
marrying their work.
Now, I told you, I love
these pictorial maps,
and before we start this session
I just want to mention something.
Curtis Bird is a very fine
antique map dealer in Denver
and he has a major business not only
in old maps, but also pictorial maps
that -- like those we're
going to be learning about.
He tells me that when a 55 year
old walks into his gallery,
they immediately go to the
19th Century maps and are eager
to buy a Colton 1855
map of their home state.
But when a 35 year old walks into
his gallery they immediately go
to all his bins of pictorial maps.
So this is going to be
-- the book is going
to be a bestseller,
I'm absolutely sure.
[ Silence ]
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
>> Stephen Hornsby: Well, good
morning and thank you, Wes,
for that wonderful introduction.
And thank you, too, to Ralph
Ehrenberg for the invitation to talk
to you this morning about
really a passion of mine,
as it is with Wes,
American pictorial maps.
From the 1920s to the 1960s
American popular culture
and commercial mapmaking intersected
to produce a remarkably
creative period
in the history of western
cartography.
During those years
dozens of graphic artists
and cartographers created hundreds
of pictorial maps depicting the
history, geography and culture
of the United States
and lands overseas.
No other country produced the
quantity, quality and variety
of pictorial maps as
the United States.
Although now relatively --
although now relatively unknown,
pictorial maps were immensely
popular during their heyday,
decorating homes, schools and
clubs, and appearing in books,
magazines and newspapers.
The maps reflected American
culture, capturing the dynamism
of the nation's burgeoning
skyscraper cities,
great industrial factories and
streamline locomotives, airplanes
and automobiles, as well as
portraying the country's fascination
with its colonial and
early republican past.
Pictorial maps also displayed
advances in printing technology,
particularly color lithography,
and showcased the talents
and originality of some of the
nation's leading graphic artists.
By the Second World War pictorial
maps had created a powerful visual
image of the United States and were
beginning to reimagine the look
of the world for a
mass consumer audience.
A great range of mapmakers designed
and produced pictorial
maps during this golden age
of popular cartography.
Staff cartographers at the nations
large map publishing houses,
such as Rand McNally,
General Drafting
and National Geographic
created many pictorial maps.
But graphic artists and
cartographers working on their own
or for commission produced
significant numbers.
Some of these artists, such as
Rockwell Ken and Everett Henry,
enjoyed considerable success, but
many labored in relative obscurity,
their work hardly known today.
Among these artists
were Jack Atherton,
[inaudible] and George Annand.
And here we have a picture of George
Annand taken in the early 1940s.
As you can see, he's at his
drafting table and he's in --
living in downtown Manhattan.
He rarely smoked cigars.
I have been told by his daughter
that on this occasion it was a time
of celebration, he had just
produced a map and the people
who commissioned it were delighted
with it and gave him a cigar,
which is why he's puffing on
the cigar in this picture.
Now, women too made pictorial maps.
Probably the first time in western
cartography that they played
such a significant creative role.
Among notable women pictorial
mapmakers were Louise Jefferson,
Elonka Curats [assumed spelling],
Elizabeth Shirtliff [assumed
spelling], and Ruth Taylor White.
Unlike staff cartographers working
at the large American
map publishers,
graphic artists were not bound
to the strict conventions
of scientific mapping.
Many of them did a variety of work,
ranging from commercial advertising
to book illustration, and felt
free to experiment with design,
content and scale in their maps.
They also drew on several
diverse cartographic traditions
and artistic movements,
including late medieval maps.
This is the Desellia World Map of
about 1550 with their depictions
of mythological peoples and
animals, American birds eye views
with their oblique perspectives.
This is about 1920, a birds eye of
Fresno County, but look carefully
and you'll see that the publishers
called it a pictorial map
of Fresno County.
Also MacDonald Gills influential
maps for the London Underground.
This is his famous
Wondergound map of 1914.
This copy is in the
Newberry Library.
And the Wonderground map
is generally considered
to be the most influential
pictorial map ever created.
Also commercial advertising
posters with their bold designs.
And finally art deco with
its simplifying patterns
and vibrant colors.
This is the outside of the Edison
Building in downtown Los Angeles,
seeing this muscular
figures, typical of art deco
and at the bottom you can see
the chevron pattern, if I can --
there we go -- down here is a
chevron pattern which will appear
in numerous pictorial
maps of this period.
Now [inaudible] several
major map collections,
particularly the Ethel M. Fair and
Muriel H. Perry collections here
in the Geography and Maps Division
Library of Congress suggests
that pictorial maps can be grouped
into six partially
overlapping categories.
Maps to amuse, maps to instruct,
maps of place and region,
maps for industry, maps for war,
and maps for post-war America.
To even mention a map is
something to amuse is, of course,
to invite condemnation by
academic cartographers.
Nevertheless, many pictorial
maps contain humorous scenes
and characters directly influenced
by American comics and cartoons.
Walt Disney created
several pictorial maps,
including Dixon's Mickey Mouse Map
of the United States, which was sold
with a Dixon crucible pencil box
as a means of promoting Mickey,
Donald and Goofy to children.
Perhaps some of you,
when you were young,
had this pencil box
with this map in it.
The Lingram [assumed
spelling] brothers of Spokane,
Washington produced a
range of hysterical maps
of the western national parks,
some of them eventually simplified
as decals for automobile
tourists who visited the parks.
And here we see Yellowstone has now
been simplified down to a decal.
Bright maps, such as
this one of Texas
from the 1950s were also common.
[Laughter] And you'll notice the
jackrabbit waving the Texan flag
atop the totem pole at
the north of Canada there.
Maps have long had
a didactic purpose.
Some pictorial maps were
commonly used to instruct.
The Graphic History
Association of New York,
publisher of Elizabeth
Shirtliff's Picture History Maps,
proclaimed in its brochure, "When
you travel, you'll get there
by following a good road map,
but it won't be much of a trip
if you see no more than those
hard, black roadmap lines.
Take a graphic history map with you.
It will make the country come alive
with all the glamour
of history and legend.
See history as you go."
The Colonial Revival
Movement of the 1920s
and '30s spurred the production
of numerous historical maps.
In 1932, for example, Washington
Cathedral marked the bicentenary
of George Washington's birth
by commissioning Earnest Klegg
[assumed spelling] to make this map
of Washington's Virginia.
So great was the popular historical
impulse Mentholatum Company,
those are the people who produce
those menthol rubs and so forth,
hired Robert T. Atcherson
[assumed spelling]
to produce maps showing the
history of American states.
Mentholatum dedicated, I quote,
"This historical compilation
to the people of Wisconsin
in appreciation
of their continued
loyalty to Mentholatum."
[ Laughter ]
School class quantities,
10 or more, 10 cents each,
complimentary copies
to school teachers.
Charitable organizations, such as
the Council Against Intolerance
in America also produced maps
to educate children and adults
about social and cultural history.
And on this wonderful map that's
in the Library of Congress,
the ribbons are showing the founding
people's and immigrant groups
that have made the United States.
And a subgenre of literary maps also
developed and has been well surveyed
in the Library of Congress's
Language of the Land.
Pictorial maps of place and region
reflected the strong currents
of regionalism in the United
States in the 1920s and 1930s,
and played to local,
regional, and state pride.
Among hundreds of maps produced
at these different scales was Arthur
Sukey's [assumed spelling] map
of Miami, it's radiant sun capturing
the art deco mood of the city.
On the West Coast Michael
Balticul-Goodman [assumed spelling]
and Eugene Newman both
associated with the University
of California created this arresting
map of Berkley, Oakland and Alameda,
full of art deco motifs such as
chevron waves, which we just seen
on that Edison Building in downtown
L.A. We also have electric winds
in the three corners there.
And if you look somewhere
in the back [inaudible] behind
Berkley there's a leaping deer,
which is a classic
art deco motif coming
out of the Decorative Arts
exhibit in Paris in 1925.
Numerous maps were made of
New York, none so [inaudible]
as Melanie Leonard's
[assumed spelling] New York
in the Air, or Super Manhattan.
Almost from the beginning
of the pictorial map craze
in the mid-1920s a subgenre
of pictorial maps of college
and university campuses emerged,
such as this map of the University
of Chicago, created
by its Alumni Club.
At a larger scale, pictorial
maps of regions were produced,
notably the [inaudible]
magnificent Evergreen Playground map
of the Pacific Northwest, complete
with art deco stylized borders
and the sunburst in
the top left corner.
At the larger scale, a handful
of world maps were designed,
perhaps the greatest being Everett
Henry's art deco inspired new Map
of the World about 1930-31.
The cartographic depiction
of humor, history,
and region proved an
irresistible advertising formula
for major American industries,
particularly railroads, bus lines,
airlines and cruise lines involved
in tourism, manufacturers and banks
that wanted to show customers
their geographic reach, and oil
and mining companies that
were exploring remote parts
of the world for resources.
The Alaska Steamship Company
employed Edward Camy [assumed
spelling] to create
this advertisement
for its Alaska service,
complete with cartoon
like characters you
can see at the bottom,
the pastel colors and
dazzling lettering.
Great Northern Railway commissioned
western artist Joe Schul [assumed
spelling] to design this map
advertising it's service to Glacier
and Waterton Lakes National Parks.
I particularly like the bears
in the foreground here confronting
the tourists [inaudible].
And Pan American Airways,
as it was then called,
advertised it's growing network with
Kenneth Thompson's map On the Roots
of the Flying Clipper Ships, and
here a nice touch of the two birds
on the equator line there.
But it was not just
pictorial maps for tourists.
Major American manufacturers
turned to the pictorial map genre
to advertise their products,
notably the new radio
and television industries
portrayed in this map of RCA
and Radisco factories in New Jersey.
Exploring the geography
of an industrial region reached
its fullest expression in a map
of Cleveland's New Trade Empire.
Advertising the opening of the
Cleveland Union Terminal in 1929,
an immense business
and transportation hub
that included the tallest
skyscraper outside New York,
the map demonstrated the
economic reach of Cleveland
over the nation's industrial
heartland,
anticipating [inaudible] central
place theory, for the geographers
in the room, by four years.
I believe Christalla [assumed
spelling] published his theory
in 1933.
He had obviously seen this
map and got his ideas from it.
At an even greater scale,
National Citibank of New York,
forerunner of today's Citibank,
commissioned Haxstrom Company
to produce this map showing
the bank's financial reach
over North and South America.
For American business, a pictorial
map was a concise and powerful way
to convey information,
a tactic still used
by multi-national companies today.
These various themes,
popular depiction, education,
regional mapping and [inaudible]
commercial advertising came together
at the beginning of the Second
World War in an outpouring
of large innovative maps
of the American war effort.
But first, these global maps
flourished their pictorial qualities
while adhering to the
conventional [inaudible] projection,
as here in this patriotic
pre-Pearl Harbor map,
produced by Hammond in 1941.
Notice that the borders of
the United States are picked
out in red, white and blue.
You can just see that.
But Richard E. Terrison
[assumed spelling] at Fortune
and Charles Owens at the Los Angeles
Times were already creating new
[inaudible] perspectives
on the globe
and their cartographic
influence spread.
Howard Burke [assumed
spelling] who worked
for the San Francisco
Examiner produced a series
of hemispheric maps at least
equal to those of Owens.
American pictorial war
cartography culminated
in six war maps produced
by the U.S. Navy.
Developed by the Naval Training
Aid Center in New York City,
and most likely drawing on the
artistic talents of Harrison
and Madison Avenue
graphic designers,
the maps captured the enormous
importance of the air war,
the sheer scale of the conflict
and the almost cinematic quality
of American pictorial cartography.
These six Navy maps also
reveal a geographic shift
in American consciousness
from continental isolationism
to global superpower.
From focusing almost entirely on
the United States in the 1920s
and 1930s, American pictorial
maps produced during the 1940s
repositioned the country
in the wider world.
This shift can be traced
quite closely
by comparing pictorial maps
created in Great Britain
and the United States
in the 1930s and '40s.
British pictorial maps of the period
best represented by those done
by MacDonald Gill have been
characterized as medieval modernism.
Tapestry maps forever
looking back to the past
to represent the present.
Gill's 1944 map of the 1941
Atlantic Charter, a symbolic moment
when world leadership
shifted from Great Britain
to the United States captured
a maritime empire of ships,
sea lanes and colonial resources.
A late 19th Century vision that
contrasted to the modernity
of this U.S. Navy war map, also
published in 1944 with its emphasis
on air power and global reach,
a new distinctly American view
of the globe had emerged.
Finally, in the post-war
era airlines, oil companies
and state governments churned
out hundred of pictorial maps
for the burgeoning
American middle class
and growing mass tourism market.
Influenced by Harrison and
other [inaudible] cartographers,
Sally DeLong [assumed spelling],
a graphic designer working
for Western Airlines,
employed a polar projection
to create this stunning image
showing proposed global air routes.
At a more down-to-earth level,
oil companies such as [inaudible]
produced numerous pictorial maps,
including one showing the importance
of oil to the American economy.
With automobile tourism growing
rapidly, touring associations
and state bureaus of tourism
produced hundreds of colorful maps,
such as this Roads to Romance
map, created by Gerald Putnam
for the Southern California
Tourist Association.
South California was also the home
of that fantasy theme
park, Disneyland.
Walt Disney used a pictorial
map to win over New York bankers
to help finance the construction
of the park in the mid-1950s,
and then had a pictorial map
produced for the millions
of tourists who visited
his Magic Kingdom.
As far as I know, no one
has studied Disney's maps,
but the fact that he developed
a series of pictorial maps
from the 1930s onwards
suggests he had a well developed
geographical imagination.
The Space Race also
started in the late 1950s.
America's leading news magazine,
Time, created a pictorial map
of our interesting world,
showing some of the key figures
of the post war world,
including Eisenhower,
Degal [assumed spelling],
NASA, [inaudible] and so forth,
and also satellites
and rockets circulating
around the globe for the first time.
Yet by the early 1960s, as
newest styles of advertising
and popular mapping were
introduced, the [inaudible]
to make pictorial maps waned.
Perhaps a symbolic end came in 1969,
when Merrill Lynch
commissioned this remarkable map
to commemorate the moon landing,
and this is just splendid.
If you look closely up here you'll
see J.F.K., L.B.J., and Nixon riding
on the back of the American eagle.
Down below we've got
[inaudible] looking at the moon
through his telescope, and I think
we've also got Romeo and Juliet
and many other characters
and [inaudible] in this map.
Well this immense body
of cartographic work has
considerable significance.
For the first time in history
popular culture shaped a distinctive
cartographic vision.
Although MacDonald Gill is
increasingly being recognized
for his pioneering cartographic
designs, for London Underground
in the late 1910s and early 1920s.
And some of you may know, there
have been two exhibitions in London
and Brighton in the past three
years dedicated to Gill's work.
I would argue that it was
here in the United States
that pictorial mapmaking
reached its [inaudible].
No other country produced
the sheer quantity, quality
and variety of pictorial maps.
This creativity should
not surprise us.
In the 1920s American popular
culture best represented
by Hollywood [inaudible],
was spreading across
the Atlantic to Europe.
New York [inaudible] London
as the world's largest
and most dynamic city.
American cartographers and graphic
designers, many of them based
on Manhattan, were well aware of new
design trends emanating from Europe,
were willing to experiment
further in the United States.
At the same time the
economy was booming.
Businesses and industries
had appetizing budgets
to support the creation
of pictorial maps.
As the New Yorker observed in
the mid-1920s, and I quote,
"[Inaudible] was going in for
art and a boom time was coming."
Although pictorial maps undoubtedly
reflects America's burgeoning
popular culture, and that is
a significant story in itself,
the pictorial map genre raises
an even more important question,
namely, what constitutes a map?
Dismissed by academic cartographers
as not representing
the earth according
to conventional cartographic
standards,
pictorial maps have been
virtually ignored by scholars.
Just before his untimely death,
geographer, Dennis Cosgrove,
began exploring the pictorial
maps of Charles Owens,
but they were hardly
representative of the broad range
of American pictorial mapping.
Furthermore, Cosgrove's arguments
turned around Californian modernism
and an American [inaudible] vision
rather than the nature of maps.
Yet pictorial maps represented
parts of human experience
in the material world, not covered
by standard topographic maps.
Much of the appeal of pictorial
maps, both to their creators
and their readers, lay in the
evocation of people and place.
The maps were not scientific
representations
of the earth's surface, but artistic
renderings, sensitive to history,
memory, architecture,
landscape and terrain.
Through the combination
of text and image,
frequently for the
purpose of telling a story.
Pictorial maps displayed a
textural richness lacking
in scientific way finding maps.
At their best, pictorial maps
contributed to the visualization
of America in the early 20th Century
and maps produced during the Second
World War projected a much larger
American vision of the globe.
From the 1920s to the 1960s American
pictorial maps were among the most
original cartographic creations
produced anywhere in the world,
a significant if underappreciated
part
of the extraordinary
exuberance, creativity,
and diversity of 20th Century
American popular culture.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Okay. Sure.
>> We'll have all three of our
speakers give their presentations
because they lay so nicely
together, you'll see,
and then Ralph Ehrenberg will
allow us however many minutes
to take questions at the end.
You can see why pictorial maps are
the next big thing in the world
of map collecting and
they've already taken off.
When you go to the Miami
Map Fair now there are lots
of them sprinkled throughout
the bins,
where five years ago there
would have been almost none.
Our next speaker is Dr. Jim Akerman.
He is Director of the Smith Center
for the History of Cartography
and curator of maps at
the Newberry Library.
Now, he has toiled in the
field 20th Century of mapmaking
for a very long time,
and his specialty --
in fact, he is probably the
dean of the field of the history
of cartography relating to
transportation and tourism,
and so we're going to be
enlightened by him today.
He has an extensive
list of publications,
but I'll just mention
two, The Imperial Map ,
which came out in 2005, and Maps:
Finding Our Place in the World ,
which was [inaudible] published by
the University of Chicago Press.
He has curated or co-curated seven
different major exhibitions of maps,
particularly Chicago's
Festival of Maps.
Who among you went to the
tremendous extravaganza?
I see lots of hands out there.
In Chicago, was it 2007?
2007. Twenty-three different
institutions have exhibits?
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Over 30. That's incredible.
That's incredible.
Well you were a major factor in
that and we are grateful to that.
He has also embraced
the digital world
and he has created many even
award-winning websites with major
and prestigious funding sources for
the websites relating to mapping
for educational and learning.
But the fact that you may
not know about this man is
that he is a very serious
player of war board games.
War board games.
And in fact he says, "You
cannot play them digitally,
that doesn't really count.
You have to be among other players.
You have to get together
physically."
So he has a squad of vicious
competitors that get together
and they play these war games.
And so we're all looking forward
to what you have to tell us, Jim.
Come on up here.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
>> James Akerman: Well, thanks, Wes.
I apologize for the computer.
Among other things, it helps
me keep track of the time,
which is something that I
often have to struggle with.
I never confessed about this war
game thing, and when Wes asked me
to tell me -- to him
something that was --
had something different that was --
didn't have anything to do with
maps, this is what I came up with.
But, of course, playing a war game
is fundamentally a mapping exercise,
because the board itself
is acted out upon maps.
The first thing I said was travel.
And I do find that it's very hard
to distinguish my personal life
from my academic life
in many, many ways.
And perhaps this talk is
something that grows out of that,
because as many historians and
geographers will confess to you,
their lifetime interest
begins with reading road maps,
at least of a certain generation.
I'm -- after this trip, if I
may add one more personal note,
I'm about to go visit my mother
who will be celebrating her
90th birthday on Monday,
and we've been asked to --
the family's been asked to give
them each a gag gift back --
gag gift them.
So I have in my personal collection
a 1962 Rand McNally Road Atlas
that I'm giving to her because she
long claims that my lifetime illness
of being interested in maps came
from her act of passing a road map
to the back seat so
I would quiet down.
[ Laughter ]
And it obviously worked.
Well, normally when
people talk about --
those of you who know
my work, earlier work,
normally when people talk
about -- sorry about this.
Normally when people talk about
road maps, we concern ourselves
with the major areas, the
major producers of these maps
that are perhaps the most
iconic, which, of course,
would be oil company maps and
state issued highway maps,
and maps produced by motor clubs.
These are -- have been focused
on because they are somewhat
respectable cartographically
in the sense that they are more
accurate -- they are accurate,
reasonably comprehensive,
professional designed,
often by well-known and reputed
cartographers, and trustworthy
in their core apparent
purposes, making route choices
and supporting navigation.
They are also promotional in a board
sense, or in a very specific sense,
often being produced to
promote particular interests.
But just as Stephen was trying
to give some more respectability
to the pictorial map, I want to talk
about another perhaps
larger archive today
of maps relating to road mapping.
I guess you'd call them
the Rodney Dangerfield
of 20th Century cartography, and
one that dwells at the margin
of road maps, which I think has
really received little attention.
Perhaps because the cartography
is often crude and seems
to take a backseat to
its promotional content.
And I speak of the vast
amount of roadside free maps
that one still finds that are
put out by roadside attractions
and tourism promotional
brochures, and, indeed,
you will find in your motel
lobby if you are heading back
to a motel or hotel tonight.
Though often they are very
crude and cheaply produced,
they are also quite
sophisticated in their conception.
This example from the -- published
by the Telephone-view Publications
in Duluth, Minnesota in 1966 shows
an extremely sophisticated way
in which advertisements
are interjected
into a general map of
the city of Duluth.
And here's a close-up
of downtown Duluth;
it's doing much the same thing.
My use of the term "road
mapping on the margin" in fact is
to a certain extent a play
on this very kind of map,
because what interests me about
these maps is not so much what's
in the interior, but indeed
what is lying at the margins.
They are also at the margins
because they are often discarded.
They are, by their
very nature, ephemeral
and they are easily thrown away
by those people that use them
and you find them rarely showing
up in respectable archives,
thrown away like so many apple cores
along the shoulder of the road.
A good illustration of this is a
Springfield map that we acquired
in 1999 which I let my daughter
spend a little too much time
with [laughter].
And it still remains in my archive,
but I have a feeling it's
never going to pass muster
at the Newberry, but
then again maybe it will.
Well, the 20th Century certainly
didn't invent this notion
of customized cartography that is
meant primarily for the promotion
of particular businesses.
Rand McNally was, for
example, a great pioneer
in custom railroad maps that
were made to promote the lands
and travel connected
with particular lines.
Even the respectable county land
ownership atlas had its share
of advertising content.
This is a map for Worcester
County, Massachusetts by F.W. Beers,
which if you look in the lower
left of this one enlargement,
not only lists people who have
subscribed to be mentioned
in the atlas, but these
includes a number of people
who are actually advertising
their businesses.
But there's something about the
20th Century that seems to --
and automobile travel in
particular that seem to give light
to this particular medium.
I think it's partly due to the fact
of the tremendous amount of mobility
that people have in traveling
around by the automobile.
That the businesses that
are connected with them seem
to fairly cry out for their
attention, and they [inaudible]
so literally on the
maps that are included.
Now, there is a lot of
self-promotion, I think,
intrinsic to automobile
road mapping,
which was very well developed
in the early 20th Century,
when there was a lot of
experimentation with the kinds
of cartography that is
going to be suitable
for this new mode of travel.
One great example is this fine
example of the Photo Auto Guide,
which was the idea was you
take a series of pictures
between two cities, in this case
between Chicago and Milwaukee,
and you annotate with them
arrows to tell you where to turn.
If this reminds you indeed
of your modern GPS system,
it's a great reminder of
[inaudible], and indeed that is one
of my themes I guess I would say.
There was also a lot
of experimentation
with different kinds
of card formats.
There was experimentation
where businesses
such as the Goodrich Tire
Company would be directly involved
in the creation of
marking [inaudible] routes
and producing maps that
represent those routes.
There was a lot of
promotion with the very idea
of highways themselves, so that in
this case the actual construction
of concrete road maps is something
that's being sold by this map
of Brown County, which was
around Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Rand McNally, not surprisingly,
was the early master of this.
It's first grade road map series
called The Auto Trails series,
which existed from 1917 to 1925,
took a general map of highways
and carefully embedded into
the highway advertisements
that were promoted when selected
by drummers that went around
and solicited these advertisements,
much the way that the construction
of county road atlases --
county atlases were
financed in the 19th Century.
Rand McNally was not beyond, in
some cases, customizing these maps
for the use of particular clients.
So this is an example of the
mid-western states, a quotation,
basically, a cartographic quotation
of its larger Auto Trails series
that was meant to put this
particular series of hotels
in Rock Island, Illinois and South
Bend, Indiana, front and center.
Well, this obviously is a
vast archive and I sort of --
several times in working on this
paper I questioned my sanity
in taking it on, because there's so
much that could be included in this,
including Stephen's pictorial maps,
and we'll see just a few examples,
but I carefully edited
these out, including some
that you actually included
in your presentation,
just to give some balance.
But I wanted to talk a little
bit about a bit of a typology,
one of course if just most obviously
-- by the way, I guess you can tell
that I've been working in
a library for too long.
And although I don't actually
catalog maps, I can't get away
from measuring things, because --
and I think it's useful when you're
looking at things on a screen.
I'm sorry I put it in centimeters.
It gives you an idea of what
the actual object looks like.
It's a lot better than looking at
this grubby pencil that I might use
for scale, otherwise, and which
you'll occasionally see crop in.
I also think it's important,
whenever possible,
especially for this genre,
to show as much as you can
who are the various people that
are responsible for those maps.
It's not just the draftsman,
it's the sponsors
that are involved in these.
Let's talk about some -- let's try
to generate a formal typology here.
So one is just the general map,
which is a map that is meant
to give you an idea of a particular
locality in the sum total,
in a very digestible format,
but meant to give a general view
of the highways in
a particular area.
Then there is the [inaudible] or
directional map, which is meant
to give you an indication of where
the particular site or attraction
that is promoting itself
can be found relative
to the larger highway network.
This leads to a variant which I
call the all roads lead to map,
which was especially used by
early hotels that are trying
to appeal to automobile tourists.
And this is one that is
actually created by Rand McNally
for Hotel Casey in
Scranton, Pennsylvania.
So you have a general road map
that has a single annotation
that is putting this particular
hotel front and center.
Another variant of this is what I
call the populated directional map,
which gives you a series
of locations.
On the left, a bunch of numbers that
don't meant anything to you relating
to a county in New Jersey
that will give you an idea
of where the locations
are of various subscribing
or mentioned locations
in relative --
related to the rest of the network.
And on the right is the location
of all the Bob Evans restaurants
in Ohio, which is the epicenter
of Bob Evans restaurants.
There is the pictorial which is
a huge quantity and we happen
to have a very -- as
Stephen has discovered,
we have a very large
quantity of these
because Rand McNally collected
these very [inaudible]
and when the Rand McNally
archives came to the Newberry,
these were incorporated
in our collection.
But this one is a particular type
of pictorial map that is a tour.
That is, you're taking
those populated sites
and you're organizing a
particular way of order
in which you're going
to experience them.
Then the panoramic
version of pictorial map,
a variant that Stephen
has already talked about.
A great many oriented
to particular highways,
in this case a very early map
showing the National Highway,
which runs through
Washington, Pennsylvania,
and intersects the
George Washington Hotel.
You'll note that this one
engaged Matthews-Northrup,
a Buffalo based firm, another major
firm in cartography at this period
of time that was very
much like Rand McNally,
engaged in this kind
of custom cartography.
And finally a category that I
don't quite know what to call,
except the evocative
or the abstract.
I'm referring to this one on
the right, which isn't going
to tell you very much about how
to get to Mount Vernon, Illinois,
but it is trying to
tell you something
about Mount Vernon, Illinois.
And here is one produced
by the Finger Lakes
Association in New York in 1979.
I'm sorry the color is that hideous;
I can't do anything
about it [laughter].
It's meant to be fall colors.
They're trying to encourage
you to visit in the fall.
Another way of breaking down
this typology is to think
about the sources of the
maps, and there are a number.
I'll start with hotels.
That is the -- these
are the sources --
the people who are sponsoring
the creation of this cartography,
not focusing so much [inaudible]
actually producing the cartography.
A lot of early automobile
hotels were very much interested
in producing fairly elaborate
maps, because they were --
the automobile was a competitor.
These hotels were built
originally for the railroad era,
and people wouldn't necessarily
venture into the center of town
to look for lodgings, and
so hotels were very anxious
to encourage people to do this.
Here's one for The Commodore
Perry Hotel in Toledo, Ohio.
As we [inaudible] later on
and we get into chain hotels,
we find actually notoriously simple,
almost ridiculously simple maps.
You'll notice the map of the hotel
room is actually larger than --
the plan of the hotel room is
actually larger than the map,
which is quite a crude thing at all,
and it's being produced in this case
by a [inaudible] associates.
It's an advertising agency who
is specializing in the production
of brochures, but not apparently
consisting having a staff
cartography that is
particularly skilled.
While you're contemplating that
cartography, which is promoting,
this is a [inaudible] venue.
I'll leave you to contemplate
the picture on the upper left,
which I can't avoid showing you,
which shows a business meeting
in full suits taking place
over the swimming pool
at the Holiday Inn [laughter].
A little more dignified approach
from Longfellow's Wayside Inn,
which is a restored hotel in
South Sudbury, Massachusetts,
which claims to be the most
-- the oldest inn in America.
And I say claims because
anytime anybody says that,
somebody else will
find something else.
I mentioned some of
these populated maps.
What a great tile, "Howard
Johnson's Restaurants, Motor Lodges,
Ice Cream, Candies Road Map".
What else could a 10-year
old interested
in road maps desire in a map?
So this is an example
of what this looks like.
All printed, I noted in the
distinctive Howard Johnson blue
and orange and you really have
to pay attention to what is
on the margins on this map,
which is the various flavors
of Howard Johnson's ice cream.
This is an example of a place map
from the Pancake House from --
jointly published by Mid-Town Motel
and Smitty's Pancake
House in Great Falls.
And in case you're wondering
where it is, it's right smack
in the middle of the map.
This one I had to include another
one relating to restaurants,
because the date is
inferred it's 1983.
There's no date on the map, but I
know it was 1983 because Green Lake,
Wisconsin is where my wife
and I spent our honeymoon,
and so I've kept it for this.
You're all familiar with this one.
This is the kind of tear
off map that you would get
at a rent-a-car place as
you landed at an airport.
Now you got to get yourself
grounded in the local geography.
This is -- I'll bet you never
thought that you better save this
because some day some scholar
might come along and think
that this was important to look at.
Services are another element that --
another common source
of these kinds of maps.
This is Ryba Bicycle Rentals map
of Mackinac Island, which gives you
where -- tells you
where the location
of the bicycle restaurant
is, but also gives you some
of the bicycle -- where
the bicycle rentals are,
but also gives you guidance to
particular sites that you might see.
Ferry's and bridges are big
publishers of these kinds of maps
because they want to convince
you that this is the best way
and the most interesting way
to go from place to place.
You see a lot of these, of course,
around in the Chesapeake
Bay and Delaware Bay area.
Some of them, as in this case,
the one for the Mount Hope
Bridge Corporation in Bristol,
Rhode Island, are quite
attractive and beautiful,
much attention has been put into it.
Another one of Stephen's
pictorial maps.
Banks being especially in the era,
and this is something that's
really interesting to me now,
very common until the 1960s, 1980s,
banks publishing maps of localities
as a method of business promotion.
It disappears why?
It disappears because local banks
disappear, and they -- by and large.
And they no longer have
this same engagement
with local communities
that they have.
Real estate agencies,
not surprisingly another important
producer of these kind of materials.
And then of course my favorite,
the largest category,
roadside attractions.
This is a very early
one from Nameless Cave.
It's actually not so early,
it just looks like it's
been through the ringer.
Here's one for the Baseball Hall
of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
An earlier one for Ausable
Chasm, or is it Chasm?
I don't know how you New
Yorkers pronounce it.
In the greater [inaudible] region.
A quite beautiful one, which you see
down at the bottom also has a kind
of localized map of the Chasm
itself, a little guided tour.
I picked this one up on a trip
to Boston not so long ago.
Right, I guess, at about the
time that Cheers was cancelled,
but not in time to prevent
a roadside attraction
or a street sign attraction
to be created in the bar
that was supposedly
the original Cheers.
There are roadside
attractions that are produced
that are government
sites, as well, or --
and not surprisingly the government
doesn't do a very good job
of spicing these up.
It's very functional and these tend
to be produced based
directly on governmental maps.
These include things
like engineering marvels
such as Fort Peck,
the Fort Peck Dam.
And some of you may remember that
-- may have done it yourself,
early on in 20th Century automobile
tourism there was a lot of interest
in going to see government
installations,
example of an industry, and so
there's a large number of these maps
that were produced to appeal to
this kind of economic tourism.
Another broad category is what
I would call the consortia map,
which includes any number of
maps that are related to --
that are produced by
regional associations.
Here's a populated directional
map for the Hudson River Valley.
I thought you'd need a little
cheesecake at this point
in the talk, so here's one for
spending your vacation on the thumb
of Michigan, produced in Detroit.
Very large number of maps produced
for the north woods of Michigan
and Minnesota, especially
around what is called the Minnesota
Arrowhead Country, that's the part
of the state that dips
over Lake Superior
and looks a bit like an arrowhead.
And, again, it's important part of
the message of this map is what's
at the margins, the way in
which the photographs work
with the map to describe the place.
The Covered Bridge Trail of
Georgia, a series of local promoters
of covered bridge historic sites
that had been gathered again
and published in Thomaston, Georgia.
Wine maps, another great example,
this is from the Russian River
Wine Road in Sonoma County.
A really perfect use of this kind
of map, because, as you know,
this country is strangely
tolerant of people driving
around tasting wine [laughter].
And here's some details of that.
And to get back -- so I hope you
get a sense, to a certain extent,
that the entrepreneurial spirit
that's reflected in this.
In some cases the entrepreneurial
spirit extends to the identification
of particular highways
as viable entities.
This goes back to the early
years of the Good Roads Movement.
One good example is the Appalachian
Scenic Highway, which was promoted
by the owner of a hotel, Roscoe
Marble [assumed spelling],
in Ashville, North Carolina.
And he got a number of other
hotel owners along the crest
of the Appalachian's to get
behind the creation of a map --
creation of this highway,
even though it had no
official government status,
as a way of promoting tourism
and bringing tourists
to these locations.
There are much simpler,
cheaper examples.
This one is the U.S. 441, the Uncle
Remus Route, which included --
which is a rather large,
very rather long strip map,
only 10 centimeters wide
but 68 centimeters long.
Another example for
the Dixie Highway,
which -- in its later years.
And I wanted to call your attention
to often the way these maps are
customized is by issuing them
to member organizations who would
then stamp their name, in this case,
the Shelby Motel, as a way of
promoting their particular business.
Consortia maps can also be
agreements among neighboring states,
as in the case of the Lincoln
Heritage Trail, a joint effort
of Illinois, Indiana and
Kentucky Tourist Bureaus.
They can also produce
rather beautiful --
they can also be devoted
to particular cities.
This may be one that Stephen knows,
a beautiful map of Saint Paul
with wonderful art deco,
industrial modernist motifs.
This one is specifically
for Wes's benefit.
It's the Denver Convention and
Visitor's Bureau from the 1950s.
And they can be somewhat more
prosaic in their presentation,
as in the case of this simple
map of Gallia County, Ohio,
which is basically the map produced
by the county transportation agency
with a little advertising
strapped on.
The last category that I'd like to
talk about is maps that are produced
by Niche Publishers, that are
specifically catering to this trade.
One great example is the Travel
Mat Company of Prairie du Chien,
Wisconsin, which produced
in the '60s
and '70s these maps all
according to the same formula
for diners and local hotels.
And they would, in return for
their mention in their map,
they'd get a series of
placemats that they would put
in front of their patrons.
Pictorial maps of sort of the mass
produced aspect of pictorial maps,
maps that would sell
subscriptions to businesses
that would then get pictures of
their businesses put on those maps.
You are probably familiar
with some of these.
This is one produced by a
company based in Seattle.
During the 1920s and 1930s
individual entrepreneurs,
in this case, Ray Walker, would
solicit listings of hotels
and produce maps in particular
areas that would combine this.
And then there would be examples
of what I call labors of love.
This is a wonderful key guide Guide
to Key West and the Florida Keys
by George Stevenson which
marries a kind of itinerary
with a great discourse on the
[inaudible] and natural history
of the entire U.S. [inaudible] that
stretches out to the Florida Keys.
Now if we look back at county maps,
we see that they began fairly --
which is the genre I
want to conclude with.
They began as fairly prosaic maps
that were produced
by county engineers.
And these kinds of maps still exist,
but very quickly they realized
the potential for tourism
in getting behind these rather
glossy kinds of publications.
And so here's one that's
produced by Cape May County.
Sometimes they could promote
industrial development.
This one did a very fine job,
the Santa Clara County in 1956
on the eve of the -- a few decades
or so before the arrival
of the digital industry.
The bicentennial seemed
to spurt a lot of counties
to produce historical
maps of their locations.
This is Dallas County.
Not the finest example
in terms of cartography;
it's extremely hard to read.
This one is a map that was put
together for New Jersey County
and real PhD's were hired to consult
on the places of cultural interest.
But you see interwoven with these
cultural landmarks are schools
and businesses, such as
New Brunswick Salvage
and Delaplaine Electrical, which I
admit are cultural institutions too,
but I don't think that's the
reason why they were chosen
to be put on this map.
Finally, before I conclude, I want
to look at an example produced
by a -- by the Delaware Chesapeake
Bay and Bridge Tunnel Complex,
which is produced -- the
map is actually produced
by General Drafting Company,
which is a very well
known road map publisher.
Then I want to juxtapose here
the two different kinds of maps
that we are seeing here on
this atlas -- on this map.
On the left -- on the right we
have a map that's a pictorial
and just sort provides a very
superficial notion of the landscape.
But it is a map that is meant
for outward consumption,
but as you can see it's not
terribly useful for navigation.
So to compensate for that
they have a more detailed map
that takes this tour and puts it
in the context of the highways
that are connected with them.
And so this really brings us --
you know, I was thinking
about Mark's remarks
about restrictive cartography.
In a way, what we're looking
at on the right is something
that is far more restrictive, and
that is choosing to select things
out of this landscape that are
only a relevance to tourists, and,
of course, is not giving a
complete picture of the landscape,
let alone of the roads that
are contributing to it.
And this leads us to some
interesting thoughts.
I think about the social
significance of these maps
and why I think they're important.
I'm struck by this map of Garrett
Roads, produced by Garrett Roads,
and early suburban shopping area
in upper Darby, Pennsylvania,
west of Philadelphia,
which is from the 1930s,
and is meant to show especially
people in Philadelphia how to get
out into the suburbs in order
to visit this shopping area.
And it's promoting
the notion of parking
and how convenient all these
places are going to be.
Really [inaudible] in a way
it's taking an active role
in reshaping the landscape --
the [inaudible] landscape that
it's going to be produced.
It does give us --
lead us to wonder a bit
about what exactly
these maps are producing
and what they are doing for us.
A little farther to the west
of Philadelphia is a well known
tourist area, the Amish country
of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
There's an endless stream
of maps and brochures,
all meant to organize this space
in terms of what is thought
to be true Amish culture.
Even a railroad is reduced
to a roadside attraction
in this particular case.
Here's the Eagle Museum.
My favorite in this
group, "Have it your way.
Burger King welcomes you to
Amish Country," apparently done
without any irony showing a motorist
coming up, getting a sack of burgers
and fries from somebody
who's dressed
like an Amish woman [laughter].
And the points of interest,
apparently it was expected
that the person using this map
really, really liked Burger King
because the tour that they
established for it has,
had you [inaudible] the Burger
King, which has drive-thru service,
go on to Wheatland, the Fulton
Opera House, Roots Country Market
and Auction, which made you hungry,
no doubt, and so you're going
to stop a Burger King
at number five.
And you apparently you didn't
eat enough and so after you went
to the Farm Museum, you're really
hungry, so you went to Burger King
at number seven [laughter].
And what are we to make of this
map which shows Laurel County
in southeastern Kentucky,
and Colonel Sanders shows
up on the upper right.
What are we to make of
our culture when a product
of the automobile culture
becomes a tourist attraction,
in this case Colonel [inaudible]
Sanders original restaurant
in Corbin, Kentucky, when a
roadside restaurant itself becomes a
historical landmark.
So we do think a little bit
about what's being excluded.
I especially think about this in
the context of this Black Hills map
of South Dakota, which
shows all sorts
of white people doing activities in
the Black Hills, while the Indians,
for whom this is a sacred region,
are shown in the margins
looking on at the lower right.
Or this map from the late 1930s,
California in a two weeks' vacation,
which has a pictorial -- I'm
sorry, an upside pictorial map --
I forgot to rotate that -- but also
designates some automobile tours
that you can take, including
one to the Orange Empire,
which where a very young lady
can even pick her own oranges.
This is done without
any sense of irony,
while at the same time we
have a very prominent warning
that says, "Warning!
While attractions for
tourists are unlimited,
please advise anyone seeking
employment not to come
to Southern California, as natural
attractions have already drawn
so many capable, experienced people
that the present demand
is more than satisfied."
I would mention that this map
was produced during the years
that George Steinbeck was making
his [inaudible] that would lead
to the creation of
the Grapes of Wrath.
Or even less emphatically,
but no less profoundly,
this map of Huntsville,
Alabama produced in the 1950s,
which lists the schools
and which we cannot help
but notice include schools
that are marked with a C,
indicating that these
are schools for coloreds.
And if you look very carefully
at the map, you can see,
especially in the two
high schools, which are --
there's the white high school,
here's the black high
school, very much smaller.
So to conclude, [inaudible]
apologies for rambling on.
Local road mapping or local
mapping for motor tourists
in the long 20th Century
seems in many respects
to be a democratic
project, though big players,
large cartographic firms are
engaged, so too are small
and local job printers, artists
and amateurs of mapping, of travel
and of their particular place in
the world, and local businesses.
And indeed [inaudible] names
are written all over the maps,
and this is one of the
things that makes them
so especially interesting.
But as these last examples
show that the historical record
of American life, map on the margins
of road mapping highlight a social
geography that is not simply
about leisure travel, neither
is it about the meeting --
simply the meeting of
maps and marketing.
Nor and perhaps most importantly is
it merely local in its significance.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
>> Our next speaker,
Ralph Ehrenberg,
really needs no introduction,
but he deserves one [laughter].
He began his interest in the field
of aerial photography immediately
after high school,
when he joined the Navy
to work in aerial photography.
And he spent several years doing
that in the Asian and Pacific area.
And then being a Minnesotan he went
back to college to the University
of Minnesota and he majored
in history and geography.
So in 1966 he began working
at the National Archives
and eventually became the director
of the area relating to maps,
and worked there from 1966 to 1979.
He joined the Library of Congress
in 1979 and later became chief
of the Geography and Maps Division.
So he was chief of this area when
the Phillips Society started,
that was his idea,
among many, many others.
And he finally retired
with honors in 1998.
Now, Mr. Ehrenberg was
appointed during --
a long the way by three successive
Secretaries of the Interior
to the U.S. Board of
Geographic Names,
and he was elected the
chairman of that entity.
He has so many publications
that he's been involved in,
but I'll mention two of my favorites
that are on my own bookshelf,
Mapping the World: An
Illustrated Geography .
This was produced not too many years
ago for the National Geographic.
And the well known The
Mapping of America ,
which he co-authored
with Seymour Schwartz.
Now after his retirement in 1998
he continued to be involved in maps
and did lots of research,
particularly in his love
of aeronautical, but in 2001 Tess,
his wife of the last half century,
allowed him to return
to his other love
and that was the Geography
and Maps Division.
Now we know that, and you will
see, that Ralph really knows maps,
but I believe his true gift
is actually as an energetic
and competent and effective
and fair manager of people.
And when you see what he's been
able to do with the Library
of Congress, it is wonderful.
When we were talking about his
personal interests, Ralph said this
about outside interests,
"It's said to say,
but during the past three
years I don't do much else
that is not related to maps."
Now that reminds me of
my 87-year old father,
who spends every day
reading medical journals
and goes many times a
week to medical lectures.
And he recently told me, "It
has been my great fortune
that my life's work of medicine
was also my life hobby."
So Ralph, it has been the
nation's great fortune
that your life's hobby has
also been your life's work.
Ralph Ehrenberg.
[ Applause ]
>> Ralph Ehrenberg:
Thank you very much, Wes.
I failed to say before about Wes,
not only that this
conference was his idea,
but that he has been a founding
member of the Phillips Society,
so he's been [inaudible]
the most active.
He's been with us for 19 years,
which we really appreciate
very much, Wes.
Thank you.
One of the least known categories
of popular cartography is
the airline passenger map,
which states from the beginning
of commercial aviation,
a new and distinct 20th
Century transportation culture
that first emerged in Europe in the
second decade following World War I
and then spread worldwide for --
from the first flights of post --
From the first flights of post World
War I converted bombers to the end
of the 20th Century, when some
230 commercial airliners worldwide
carried nearly two billion
passengers annually.
Airlines produce a
variety of passenger maps.
These maps can be defined as medium
to small scale geographical maps
that depict airline routes, route
systems and airport destinations.
And they were designed to
aid travelers in planning
and following their flights.
I will begin my presentation
briefly by discussing the impact
of flight itself or air travel
on the design of airline maps,
and then examine three
major types of airline maps.
The Souvenir and Entertainment
maps, which were popular
from the 1920s to the 1970s.
In-flight Magazine maps, which
first appeared in the 1970s.
And finally In-flight Tracking
Charts, which were involved
from the 1940s to the 1990s,
but continue today in the form
of electronic moving maps.
While the appearance of
airline maps may seem similar
to the contemporary road maps that
Jim has jus talked about, their form
and content were greatly influenced
in three basic and subtle ways
by the process of flight
and aircraft design.
First flying above the surface
of the earth provides a
unique three-dimensional view
of the landscape not
available to the motorist.
Today we are accustomed to flying
and see images of the
earth from space.
But during the first decades
of air travel flying was
still considered a miracle
and provided new ways
[inaudible] the world.
"Perhaps the greatest joy of flying
is the magnificence of the view,"
Amelia Earhart wrote in 1932.
"If visibility is good,
the passenger seems
to see the whole world,"
she continued.
"Color stand out, and the
shades of the earth unseen
from below form an
endless magic carpet."
New Zealand geographer D.W. McKenzie
characterized the constantly
changing landscape as a [inaudible].
As recently as 2002 an airline
survey indicated that 44%
of passengers still believe
that, "The most important feature
of airplane travel
is a window view."
Three-dimensional panoramic
perspectives greatly influence the
look of airline maps.
Next, flying above the surface of
the earth was not an accepted form
of transportation for
much of the 20th Century.
A series of highly
publicized airline accidents
through the 1950s exaggerated
these concerns.
In response, maps were used
as advertising platforms during
airline marketing campaigns
to counteract the fear
of flying to some extent,
by highlighting the
experience of the air crews,
describing the process of flight,
and illustrating the latest
developments in aircraft development
and in aircraft -- air navigation.
Finally, an airliner's
speed, range, service ceiling
and cabin configuration
greatly influenced the form
and content of airline maps.
The first category of
airline maps that I want
to discuss are souvenir
and entertainment maps.
Prior to airline deregulation
in 1978,
when air travel was still enjoyable
and airliners [laughter] catered
to their customers, major
airlines provided passengers
with complimentary air travelers
kits, or flight packets,
containing information
that informed and inspired.
These free packets generally
included passenger tickets,
flight time tables, postcards,
sheets of writing, stationary
and air mail envelopes, leaflets
or booklets promoting the airlines,
occasionally a set of playing cars,
and frequently one or two more maps.
Cotton balls and chewing gum for
dealing with noise and changes
in air pressure were
also sometimes included,
particularly during the
pioneer periods of aviation.
During the first two
decades of commercial flight,
airline maps were produced for
relatively short range, slow,
unheeded, noisy, low flying
aircraft such as the Ford Tri-Motor,
and the first all metal
twin engine Boeing 247
and the Douglas DC-3
that we see here.
Prior to World War II, all
flying was low altitude
because aircraft lacked
the proper instruments
and the pressurized cabins that
would have enabled them to fly
above severe weather conditions.
While commercial aircraft for that
era had service ceilings of 15,000
to 23,000 feet, they generally flew
at low altitudes, about 1,500 feet,
which was perfect for
viewing the landscape
and following any detailed
route map.
Furthermore, aircraft of that era
were configured to carry eight
to 21 passengers, with seating
arrangements in two single rows,
or a single and double
row combination,
which provided most passengers
access to large cabin windows.
Maps were one of the
first diversions
for these early air
travelers during their noisy,
bumpy, often sickening rides.
The first passenger maps
were generally route maps,
formatted as linear map strips with
[inaudible] depicted by a bold black
or red line within a
narrow band of geographical
and aeronautical information.
Their form and content were modeled
on contemporary World War I
air navigation scroll maps
that were designed to be mounted
on aircraft instrument panels,
illustrated in this photo of
French Flying Ace, Jean Navarre.
Strip maps originated with European
airlines and continued as the map
of choice until World War II,
with Air India, Air France,
[inaudible] airlines
briefly returning
to this genre during
the post war period.
They were issued initially as
fold out pocket maps that ranged
up to three meters in length.
Produced for the relatively
[inaudible] low altitude,
large window aircraft of
the [inaudible] years,
when flying was still a novelty
and identifying points of interest
from the air was one of
[inaudible] greatest pleasures,
these maps were designed to help
passengers locate their position
and to add interest to the trip.
Perspective drawings,
aerial photographs,
and textural geographies illustrated
and describing a prominent scenic
and cultural landmarks were often
[inaudible] to aid in this process.
Distances were denoted
in kilometers or miles,
generally at standard intervals
of 10, 20, 50 or 100 units,
similar to air navigation charts.
Because the long strip maps
were difficult to manipulate
in airline seats, some airlines
also produced strip maps in the form
of small pocket atlases, which were
much easier to handle and read.
Rand McNally was a leader in
this area beginning in about 1933
with the United Airlines Contract.
Cover art was used to promote new
aircraft, such as the Boeing 247,
the world's first modern
airliner, which made possible coast
to coast travel between New York
City and San Francisco in less
than 20 hours, with only seven
intermediate stops [laughter].
Systems maps were similar
to route maps,
but displayed an airlines
entire network of routes.
Rand McNally entered the field
of airline map publishing in 1929
with this illustrated map designed
to Transcontinental Air Transport,
the forerunner of TWA, which
pioneered the first coast
to coast route in the United States,
a 48-hour transcontinental
transportation service linking New
York City and Los Angeles.
Designed and developed by Charles
Lindbergh, who's photographed
in the pilot seat of the Fort
Tri-Motor that we see here,
it was a combination air/rail route,
since night flying had
not yet been perfected.
A black line indicates that
section of the route covered
by train service, which was used
in two consecutive evenings.
A purple line with a symbol
of an airplane outlined
in white identifies those
segments of the route
that were covered by air service.
Measuring 38 by 80 centimeters, the
map was illustrated in the tradition
of pictorial maps, with landscape
features and cities displayed
that were found along the route.
"I am simply amazed at
the detail that has gone
into this TAT map line," Ann Morrow
Lindbergh wrote to a friend in 1929,
during the inaugural flight,
flown by her husband, Charles.
"They give so much care
to comfort and luxuries.
All the conveniences and comforts
are beautifully planned out,
including a large folding map
decorated [inaudible] old picture
map style by [inaudible],
given to each passenger
so he may study the country."
It was not until the mid-1930s,
however, that systems maps began
to replace strip maps as the
primary airline route map
in the United States.
This transformation was influenced
by Postmaster General Walter
Folger Brown forced merger
of some 30 small regional airlines
in the four giant carriers,
American, Eastern, United
and Transcontinental
and Western Air, or TWA.
And the introduction
at the same time
of the two twin engine long
haul commercial aircraft
that revolutionized air
travel, the Boeing 247
and the particularly
the Douglas DC-3.
These two actions placed the
United States in a leadership role
in air transportation,
which it came to dominate
for the next half century.
Teaming up with leading road
map publishers of that era,
General Drafting, which
Jim mentioned,
HM Guche and Rand McNally.
These airlines introduced a series
of systems maps between 1936
and 1937 -- 1947, rather, that set a
new standard for airline map design.
These large fold out maps
measuring up to 121 centimeters
in length generally included a
comprehensive route network map
on one side, the front side, and
individual route maps in the form
of strip maps on the [inaudible],
which are often enhanced with insets
of scenic views and
narrative descriptions
of cities and iconic landmarks.
Although their design
and format were similar
to automobile road maps, the airline
maps often included descriptions
and illustrations relating to flight
procedures, aircraft reliability
and navigation aids for
promotional and safety purposes.
Let me go back here a second.
Note the cloud atlas in
the upper left-hand corner.
A metaphor for space and travel,
cloud atlases were a
recurring educational theme
on souvenir airline maps and
atlases as late as the 1970s.
World War II had a dramatic
impact on the airline map.
Initially in the area of national
security and more significantly
by laying the foundation
for widespread global travel
through technological
advancements in aircraft design,
developments of new aerial
navigation systems and production
of worldwide coverage of
air navigation charts.
Notably the Army Air Course
World Aeronautical Chart,
shown here with index,
which provided base maps
for airline cartographers
after the war.
Following the war,
the varies of time
and distance were dramatically
reduced
with the widespread introduction
of four engine long haul aircraft
with pressured cabins
in the late 1940s,
such as the Boeing 307
Stratoliner, shown on the left,
showing flying above the weather.
The Lockheed Constellation
and the Douglas DC-6.
These aircrafts could carry 43 to
60 passengers at service ceilings
of 24,000 to 28,000
feet, and cruising speeds
of 220 miles to 315 miles per hour.
With aircraft performance
ranges almost tripling from 1000
to 2800 miles, air age map
projections were reintroduced during
the war, such as the
[inaudible] were adapted
to display expanded airline
networks and reject the image
of globalization that was
ushered in by the war.
The noted cartography, Richard
E. Harrison, for example,
selected a modified [inaudible]
oval projection for a series
of timetable maps that he completed
to display Pan American World
Airways' extensive route structure
from 1947 to 1950, the
largest then in existence.
"The geographic scope and span of
the war forced the public to think
of the earth more and more
as the round sphere it really
is," Harrison wrote in 1943.
"And as this truth becomes clearer,
we find that it is causing us
to change many of our
ideas about geography.
We are turning more and more
to the globe and to maps
which are projected in such a way
that they show true distances.
For distances that become so
short because of the plane,
that they are much more
important to us than they used
to be," concluded Harrison.
As TWA and American overseas
airways joined Pan American Airways
with overseas routes following the
war, they quickly adopted the globe,
not only to project their
worldwide networks, but as a symbol
for the international reach.
The Great Circle Route from Seattle
to Tokyo began by Northwest Airlines
in 1947 and the Polar
Route from Copenhagen
to Los Angeles inaugurated by
Scandinavian Airlines in 1954,
popularized the [inaudible]
projection for the air traveler.
As early as 1943, TWA
promoted this projection,
which it dubbed the World Air Map
in a 12-page brochure
titled The Air Age .
[Inaudible] Map Services of Sweden
designed an excellent polar map
for the Scandinavian Airline system,
the flight carrier of Denmark,
Norway and Sweden, which described
and illustrated the navigational
challenged posted by polar crossing.
TWA and Northwest issued similar
information brochures concerning the
[inaudible] projection as
well as the [inaudible].
Airline maps also become more
generalized and less detailed
as aircraft speeds and flying
ceilings progressively increased,
propelling air travelers
above the clouds at velocities
and altitudes too fast and too
high to see particular landmarks.
Generalized maps and
narrative descriptions
that helped passengers form mental
maps of the lands and people
over which they flew
replaced the popular pre-war,
hour by hour description
of a route's landscape.
As part of this effort, the layered
[inaudible] coloring technique seen
here, which was the most widely
used method of portraying land form
on physical maps and atlases at
that time, was gradually replaced
by plastic or hill shading.
The American cartographic artist,
Hal Shelton, was at the forefront
of devising new cartographic
techniques
for displaying more realistic
images of the earth's surface
from the vantage point of space.
As chief cartographer for the map
publisher, Jeppesen and Company,
of Denver, Colorado and later HM
Guche, Shelton set the standard
for airline maps by blending colors
with the physical structure
of the land.
He portrayed the [inaudible]
types of natural vegetation,
covering the world as
seen from ground level.
Shelton's visual key helped airline
passengers identify his basic
vegetation types, ranging from
forest tropical broadleaf evergreen,
which is dark green at the
bottom, to the tundra mosses
and stunted active plants,
light brown at the top.
Twenty airlines carried
Shelton's maps from 1949 to 1974,
and many others tried to
emulate his natural color system,
but none matched his artistic
rendering of his work.
Trained in mathematics and
art, Shelton began his career
with the U.S. Geological
Survey, but became dissatisfied
with their traditional methods
of representing terrain.
Adverse to the use of contours
for displaying land form
for the general public,
he developed the basis
for his natural color system
during World War II, preparing maps
of North Africa for the U.S. Army.
An accomplished landscape artist,
he used an [inaudible] airbrush
and applied [inaudible]
and acrylic paints
to offset press [inaudible]
zinc plates
in which contours were imprinted.
His 28 year career with
Guche and Jeppesen,
his natural color based maps were
used for both aeronautical charts
and airline souvenir maps.
And if you join us on Saturday for
the open house in the Geography
and Maps Division,
we'll have a number
of his original maps on display.
We have his entire
collection of zinc plates.
The most productive
period of airline souvenir
and entertainment map production
coincided with the first jet age
from 1958 to 1970, a period of
rising incomes, leisure time,
and unprecedented increased
in passenger volumes.
This new generation of aircraft,
led by Boeing 707, cruised at speeds
of nearly 600 miles per hour
at 30,000 to 42,000 feet,
with performance ranges
of some 4000 miles.
"Speed and geography were
the new marketing strategies
as airlines lifted their sensation
of flight itself towards a
mass market system of travel
which was cheap, simple
and democratic,"
observed historian, Frank Jackson.
These new performance levels
inspired novel changes
in map design, such as
a new distance scale
that compared the speed of
jet airliners and time saved
with piston and turbo prop planes.
The almost universal adoption
of Shelton's natural color concept
depicting the earth's surface.
Smaller scale systems maps for long
haul routes, and the elimination
of national [inaudible] boundaries
suggestive of globalization
and democratic -- of
international airlines.
American carriers also promoted
travel through their maps.
"You know, in our business we
are actually selling geography,
not airline rides,"
Pan American's traffic
and sales personnel were taught.
Pan America published a six-part map
series of its world route network
in 1960, for example, that then
stretched more than 70,000 miles
into 114 cities and 80
countries and on six continents.
This series is one of my favorite
since the images of the globe --
the globes are based on photographs
from the six foot diameter,
500 pound Rand McNally geophysical
globe donated to the Library
of Congress by Andrew
McNally III, in 1992 in honor
of the Columbus [inaudible]
and the 27th International
Geographical Congress.
Plastered and hand-painted at Rand
McNally's factory in Richmond,
Kentucky, it was considered at
the time the most accurate model
of the earth every manufactured.
The globe is on permanent display
on the second floor mezzanine
of the Madison Building and I
hope that you'll have a chance
to view that while you are here.
Examples of other airline
maps devoted
to a travel team included those
prepared for Eastern Airlines,
who created a joint venture
with Hertz car rentals.
Fifteen small scale tourist maps
embellished it's 1962 systems map.
Similarly, American Airlines
celebrated our national parks system
with detailed information
on its systems map,
since many of the parks are located
near cities served by the airline.
The red squares on this map
indicated navigation checkpoints,
which are then provided
through radio signals
to the aircraft -- to the navigator.
Nearly 100 national, regional
and international western
airlines issued souvenir
and entertainment maps
during this period,
often with frequent revisions.
Print runs of 500,000
were not uncommon.
Shelton's popular United States
-- United Airlines map series,
for example, averaged 1.3 million
maps issued yearly from 1959
to 1970, with a high of 2.5
million maps distributed in 1967.
Air France's bilingual
booklet, Long Distance Flights,
with 16 double-page regional route
maps was in print for nine years.
Air India's airline map,
The Route of My Jet Carpet,
went through 19 editions
over 20 years.
Initially published by George
Phillip and Son Limited
in Great Britain in 1959, this
large folded systems map with eight
to 12 route maps on [inaudible]
was ultimately produced
by five different printing presses
in Great Britain, Sweden and India,
just to give you an idea of the
internationalism of this industry.
Airline map production numbers
decreased dramatically in the 1970s,
as the airline industry was
buffeted by the Arab oil embargo,
deregulation of air space,
introduction of wide bodied jumbo
jets with their twin engines,
twin passenger aisles and
popularity of in-flight movies.
The Boeing 747 and the
Lockheed Tri-Star each held more
than 400 passengers.
More than twice as many as the
first generation of jet carriers,
leaving little room to
study fold out maps,
plot routes or view the landscape.
By the end of the decade most
airlines had replaced complimentary
flight packets with their souvenir
maps with in-flight magazines.
A product of the jet age, one
of its major [inaudible] a map
or map section, often printed as
multi-page inserts by [inaudible].
British Overseas Airway Corporation
was a leader in this field,
reflected by its 1969 magazine
which included 20 pages of maps
out of a total of 88
pages in the magazine.
These route maps and index differed
little from earlier souvenir maps.
As the decade progressed,
three new types
of airline maps appeared separately
and in in-flight magazines
in response to the rapid
growth of air traffic
and the widespread development
of hub and spoke networks
of connecting flights triggered
by airline deregulation
in the United States in 1978,
which was followed then
in other countries.
The first were destination
maps which provide passengers
with the location at which
their aircraft fly-by point
and line symbols generally
within an outlying map or globe
without consideration for
geometric or topographic accuracy.
Destination maps are generalized,
often schematic, or easily read
and generally provide information
that can be understood at a glance.
Geographic information, if
displayed, is limited generally
to coastlines, principle rivers and
political or administrative borders.
They were widely adopted worldwide
in either line or point form
by the end of the 20th Century.
Hub and spoke network maps
consist of a standard world
or regional system map with
inset maps of the individual hubs
that compromise the
airlines new route systems.
These were issued separately as
traditional souvenir maps by Eastern
and Delta airlines, but
primarily in the form
of timetable maps from
about 1982 onward.
In-flight magazine also introduced
the terminal map to the public.
Terminal maps displayed airline
locations and airport facilities.
Designed to aid passengers
in making flight connections,
they generally complimented
destination maps
and in-flight magazines, although
at least one airline, Delta,
issued them as pocket
atlases up to 1990.
In-flight tracking maps
date from the earliest days
of commercial flying, as illustrated
by this route map mounted
on the front cabin wall
of a Farman F-60 Goliath
in the early 1920s,
a French aircraft.
This trip map from the
1920s and 1930s were also
in fact tracking maps, but it
was not until the late 1940s
that maps designed
explicitly for passengers
to plot their routes appeared.
Personal in-flight tracking
maps date from the establishment
of the North Atlantic flight
route that first linked Europe
and North America following
World War II.
These were made possible
by the introduction
of the pressured long haul aircraft
that I've already discussed,
and new aircraft navigation
techniques,
such as pressure pattern
flying developed during the war
by the Army Air Transport
Command to move
and supply American troops overseas.
Instructions were provided on the
map sleeve to guide the passenger
in plotting his or her route
by longitude and latitude based
on flight reports from the captain.
American overseas airlines
plotting charts were soon followed
by other airlines with
their long ocean crossings.
TWA included plotting
maps of the North Atlantic
within their souvenir
atlases from 1950 to 1965.
An interesting feature
of the TWA map is
that it displayed the location
of the 10 weather ships stationed
at fixed positions in the North
Atlantic from 1947 to 1980,
monitoring weather conditions
aloft and on the surface,
which was then sent by radio to
aid aerial and surface navigators.
It also provided a detailed
explanation and diagram
of pressure pattern flying,
a technique that took
advantage of the air currents.
Geographer, William
Lawrence [assumed spelling],
a World War II navigator,
contributed significantly
to improving this technique
for saving fuel
and time during the
long ocean crossing.
Plotting maps were later
reintroduced as single sheet maps
by American Airlines, British
Overseas Airlines, Delta,
KLM and SAS under the general title
of Briefing Maps from the Captain,
and these remain popular souvenirs,
often containing the names
of crew members and these
were issued through the 1990s
and finally replaced by
electronic moving maps.
And here we have an
in-flight tracking chart
which you're all familiar with.
These began in 1984
with the installation
of the first electronic
map in Swiss Air
and Scandinavian Airways
service passenger cabins
by [inaudible], a California firm.
[Inaudible] was a real
time map display,
synchronized with a plane's
flight deck airborne electronics.
Viewed on [inaudible] or seat
and video screens it depicted
the flights route, ground speed,
altitude and distance
in time to destination
on [inaudible] or seat
video screens.
I'm just curious to
see what's up there.
[ Laughter ]
Electronic moving maps bring us
full circle to the first trip maps
and through the early days
of commercial aviation,
when passengers enjoyed
unobstructed views of the landscape
by providing [inaudible] a large
window for today's passengers
to enjoy geographical presentation
of the world passing below them.
During my brief overview of
the history of airline maps,
I hope that I have shed some light
on this little known category
of popular cartography, and perhaps
generate the further research
and reflection.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
>> If our other two
speakers would come up,
we do have some -- a little time.
Don't run away yet.
We're not over yet.
We have a little bit of time,
carefully managed this morning
in accordance with the
program, for some questions.
So if all three speakers
would please come forward
and then we'll do our best to --
there are microphone
available for the questions.
Do we have any questions?
>> I got the microphone.
I hope it works.
My question is for Mr. Hornsby.
I was curious why you said
pictorial maps were disappearing.
If you walk out the door into
tourist Washington you can pick
up any number of pictorial
travel maps.
Did you base on that
statistics of some kind?
>> Stephen Hornsby: I think if
you look at the genre from, say,
1925 onwards, there's just
a massive explosion in 1926,
the late '20s into the '30s and then
also during the Second World War.
And then at least from looking at
the two collections in the Library
of Congress, which number about 1800
maps, and I've also looked at more
than a million 2th Century
American maps on EBay, so I think,
although I haven't been counting
them, I have a sort of sense
of the quantity, the
productivity of pictorial maps.
And I would argue that the
Golden Age, the '20s and '30s,
now this is not to say pictorial
maps are not still being produced.
There are several artists, well
known artists who do produce them.
And as you say, there
are these tourist maps,
but I don't think it's quite the
same as the really magnificent works
of graphic art that were produced
in the late '20s, '30s and '40s.
I am open for a challenge on
this, but that's my general sense,
that you get a diminution during the
late '50s and '60s as other types
of commercial advertising
using maps come in.
>> Next question.
Yes?
>> This is also for
Professor Hornsby.
You described the period
as one almost cohesive
unit with -- I'm here.
>> Stephen Hornsby: Okay.
>> There was the [inaudible]
of the '20s and the early '30s
and then you moved
to the geopolitics
of the rise of the superpower.
[Inaudible] anything about popular
cartography in the Depression?
Was there a Depression cartography
or it must have had some impact
that [inaudible] it over.
>> Stephen Hornsby: Yes.
That's a good question.
I mean, unfortunately, although some
library's collect pictorial maps,
what hasn't really been
collected are the personal papers
of the graphics artists
and cartographers
who were doing this work.
Now, I've been fortunate in getting
in touch with the descendants
of at least two of these artists.
One of them I showed
you, George Annand,
and he was quite a well-known
commercial artist doing work
for Nabisco and other companies
in Manhattan during the
boom years of the '20s.
The Depression came and he
refused to get employed by the WPA
and had a really tough time of it.
But, interestingly, he did
pick up quite prestigious jobs,
including working for Rand
McNally to produce pictorial maps.
So certainly there is a great
reduction in advertising budgets
in the '30s, during the Depression,
but pictorial maps are
still being produced,
not just the stand alone map or
the folded brochure, but Annand,
for example, did book
covers with maps.
In fact, I believe he
did the first book cover
with a map on it, a fictitious map.
And there was also work within
books, the [inaudible] papers,
for example, and maps that authors
needed to illustrate their books.
So he picked up work that way,
but it was very tough
going during the '30s.
Again, I supposed one could try and
look at statistics through copyright
and see if there is a diminution
the production of pictorial maps,
but my life is too
short to [laughter] go
through the 40 odd
million or whatever it is.
I have done some work
in the copyright library
in the Madison Building, and
I really don't think I want
to be counting the
copyrights on this.
But certainly some of the artists
did have a really tough time of it.
>> Do you have some questions?
Someone has the microphone?
>> [Inaudible] if it's on or not.
I guess it is.
I'm a collector and I also have
a question about pictorial maps.
I recently had an occasion to
try to look at the definition
of a pictorial map and I
found it quite confusing.
Wallace and Robinson in cartographic
innovations have a very narrow
definition of pictorial maps.
It's really, it has to have some
features shown in elevation.
And somebody named Nigel
Holmes [assumed spelling],
who's written a book on pictorial
maps has an extraordinarily broad
definition of pictorial maps.
Again, as a collector, I'm not
sure if matters a lot to me,
but academically it seems to me it's
a question of how you as the author
of a forthcoming book
[inaudible] define a pictorial map.
>> Stephen Hornsby: That's
an excellent question.
Thank you.
In a longer version of this
paper, I, in fact, talk about --
I preface my comments about talking
about Matthew Edney's model of Modes
of Cartography, which
we heard from from Mark.
And I think one of the points
that Mark made and Matthew makes
in his paper is that how we do
not have discreet boundaries
around maps.
That they do overlap, and I think
we saw that with Jim's paper,
shading into sort of the
pictorial tradition and also
with Ralph's presentation of aerial
maps, there are pictorial qualities.
And this is [inaudible] a bit.
For someone line Harrison, certainly
he sort of pictures the globe,
but I see him and some extend
Owens as being on the margin
of the pictorial tradition.
And, again, I don't want to draw
hard boundaries, but there seems
to be a body of work which
was collected by [inaudible]
which is solidly pictorial.
And if this book comes to pass,
I hope to show what I
consider to be the core.
But I'm absolutely in agreement
that it does phase into other types
of cartography, as we've
heard this morning.
Sorry, that's not a very
definite definition for you,
but I think with this kind of
qualitative material and subject,
it's a useful one to work with.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
>> James Akerman: Well,
I think it's a very --
oh, sorry, I guess it
didn't [inaudible].
The question was -- because I think
your mic wasn't fully projecting.
The question was that maps are
not just used for navigation,
but to get a sense of the place,
give you reasons for travel.
And with electronic -- with the
digital GPS based cartography,
a lot of that is lost because
it's all reduced to sort
of the same algorithm
and way of presenting.
Am I paraphrasing your
question correctly?
And I think it's a really, really
interesting and valid observation.
I've thought a lot about this
recently, because you notice
that a lot of the examples that
I pulled out are quite recent,
partly because they have been
things that I've been collecting.
But at least with regard to
this type of cartography,
rumors of the demise of
paper are exaggerated.
And I think you can say that's also
true for road mapping at large,
although it's sort of like Mark's
question about the tipping point,
we're a little too close to
know exactly what's happening,
or whether we're looking at
a generational type of thing.
I think I myself, we all use --
those of us who have
the smartphone's,
which is pretty universal these
days, even for [inaudible] like me,
but, you know, we all use them
and we use them very precisely.
But I think it's important to
observe that one of the things
that you do when you look at these
things is that, without you asking
for it, all sorts of
recommendations pop
up for hotels, and things like that.
But I agree, the -- one of the
greatest importance of these kinds
of things are the way
that they do [inaudible]
and give you a reason to go places.
That was very much a part of
the paper map, and I don't think
that there -- this has yet been
substituted by the digital,
although there's certainly
the capacity
for that to pop in pictures.
People are doing this now and the
way they annotate their own travels
and you put a GPS coordinate
on a photograph that you take
and those kinds of things.
So in time, I think that's
probably going to be the case.
But there's also the -- I
think your questioning gets
to the larger question of
whether paper is going away,
and I think it's too early to say.
>> We have time for
one last question
and you have the microphone, sir.
>> Thanks, Wes.
I'd like to poll our three
speakers on the issue of legibility.
Have you noticed any trends in your
respective genre's in the legibility
of type, in particular with
reference to the size of type,
the contrast between type, and
background, and also type style?
Are these maps easier to read now?
Did they go through a phase
where they were easier, or?
>> James Akerman: I'm going
to use one of your answers.
I don't like -- I don't
think you'll like my answer,
because I don't think -- at
least for what I'm looking at,
there's such a tremendous
variety of these things,
I don't see any clear trend.
A lot of it has to do with whether
it's apparent that a train --
a professionally trained
cartographer has been schooled,
or a graphic artist has
been schooled on questions
and balance and legibility.
But I don't see any
chronological trend in that.
[Inaudible] see some pretty poorly
designed maps with small typefaces.
Does that answer your -- I mean,
I don't [inaudible] a real trend.
>> Ralph Ehrenberg:
Yeah, I don't either.
But to follow-up, I guess
[inaudible] former question, too.
In the cockpit and
the passenger area
of the plane, the print is gone.
It's all digital.
And so that's -- they still have
the magazine maps, but I don't --
I just haven't looked
at that part of it.
>> Stephen Hornsby: [Inaudible]
pictorial maps were often produced
by graphic artists right up to
the present, they're trained
in lettering and typography,
and many of these maps really show
magnificent examples of calligraphy.
And, again, to refer
back to George Annand,
he belonged to two
calligraphy society's,
I think one in the United States and
one in Britain, so he was very aware
of calligraphy and
trends in lettering.
And I think these artists
prided themselves
in making very legible maps.
>> I think this morning's
session has been very interesting.
And we have three learned speakers
here, and a fourth as well,
and all four of them will
stay up in this front area
for your questions after we break.
Please join me in thanking them.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.