The Map Room

Satellite images of Ryongchong, North Korea, before and after the explosion (via MetaFilter).

Mapping Toolbox 2, which, according to its publisher, “provides a comprehensive set of functions and graphical user interfaces for building map displays and performing geospatial data analysis in MATLAB,” was released this week (via MacNN). (I keep track of software announcements largely because I don’t know anything about them, not because I’ve sold out. I’d love it if people could explain, in the comments, what sorts of things people use these software packages to do.)

Also via Things Magazine, a scan of an 1870 system map (large JPEG) of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, from a site that archives timetables of New Jersey railroads.

More scans of old maps — the covers only, alas — at a site that looks like it was just getting started — back in 1998 — and stayed there (via Things Magazine).

I’m a sucker for road maps, so I think I’ve saved the best of Plep’s three links to various Osher Map Library pages for last: an exhibition of early highway maps, called Road Maps: The American Way, that took place in 2001. It’s not so much a collection of maps as a collection of the physical objects: there are a lot more images of map covers than the actual maps. But the exhibition is fascinating for giving highway maps a history, and included some neat facts about their origins that I hadn’t known before.

The second Osher Map Library link brought to us by Plep is to a reproduction of Henry Popple’s 1733 map of North America:

This web site presents a subset of Mark Babinski’s Henry Popple’s 1733 Map of The British Empire in North America (Garwood, NJ: Krinder Peak Publishing, 1998). Although only twenty copies of this book have been printed (ten of which have been donated to map libraries in the U.K. and the U.S. and the remaining ten have been reserved for sale by Mr. Babinski), Mr. Babinski’s research will be of great interest to a wide array of historians and map afficionados and deserves wider distribution. The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education of the University of Southern Maine has accordingly collaborated with him to prepare this web site. Unfortunately, copyright issues prevent us from reproducing the 246 images in the original work. (These are of various states of Popple’s twenty-sheet map, of the key maps, and of many related maps and documents.) We are able, however, to provide a complete set of images of its copy of state 7 of Popple’s map and of state 1 of the key map (Smith Collection, S-192).

Another exhibition that took place years ago but which still has a web presence: The Cartographic Creation of New England. With lots of images of early maps (the collection includes immediate post-discovery woodcuts from the late fifteenth century, and carries on into the twentieth century), this exhibit’s purpose is to chart the creation of “New England” as a spatial concept. (via Plep; this is the first of three links he dug up the other day from the University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library).

Here’s another subway map, sort of. Every day, more and more people are having graphical fun with a map of the London Underground. Ralf links to one where the names have been “translated” into German. I am told by German-speaking friends, who provided examples, that this is very silly indeed. It’s an example of bilingual humour — the comedy is in the mis-translation, e.g. “Waterloo” to “Wasserklo” (the loo) — that Europeans seem to specialize in.

Though there have certainly been changes, the remarkable thing about this 1937 map of the Paris metro is that it shows how much of the current network was already in place by then (via Kottke; see previous entry: Paris Metro).

The folks from Geist have e-mailed details on their Geist Gallery exhibition of maps from the magazine’s Caught Mapping series. The exhibition will take place at the Geist Gallery — “home of the Stupid School” — at 1054A Gerrard Street East, Toronto (map) from April 17 to May 17.

The launch party will take place on April 17 from 7 to 9 p.m.:

Geist invades Toronto with an exhibition of its quirky, controversial and sometimes confusing Caught Mapping series of Canadian views. Meet Geist editor Stephen Osborne and mapper Melissa Edwards at the launch party on Saturday, April 17.

(See previous entries: Geist Exhibition, Media Coverage; Geist Mapper; Caught Mapping Archives; Caught Mapping.)

MAPublisher 6.0 was announced today. It’s a collection of Adobe Illustrator plug-ins that allow you to import GIS data into that software. Manipulating proper data with a proper graphics program, apparently. (via MacCentral)

Despite the fact that the tagline in my about page mentions mappæ mundi, I’ve yet to mention them in this blog. Links are (of course) welcome. I’ll get things started with the Wikipedia entry and a bibliography of mappæ mundi and scholarly works on the subject.

Radio-tracking wild animals for conservation purposes is not new, but using GPS collars — at $5,000 apiece — to track the movements of mountain lions is not something I’ve heard of before (via Gizmodo).

Virtual Moon Atlas is free lunar atlas software for Windows; certain functions appear to require OpenGL support (via the Astronomy tribe).