The Map Room

I was hoping that some useful maps illustrating the effects of yesterday’s tsunami would turn up, and as usual the Internet did not disappoint. Via Boing Boing again, two separate animations illustrating the spread of the tidal waves: this one (645 KB animated GIF); and, from the NOAA, this one (QuickTime, 3.5 MB).

The Topographical Engineering Detachment — they’re sort of an SCA for 19th-century U.S. Army engineers — has this dead-interesting page of surveying and mapping equipment from the 1800s. Old photographs and descriptions. Via ba’s comment on MetaFilter.

Maps of theme parks, dating back as far as 1931. Quite an extensive collection. Via Boing Boing.

As I’ve said before, this site’s name is derived from libraries’ practice of naming their map collections map rooms. Matt has a photo of the Seattle Public Library’s map room.

The Anchorage Daily News profiles cartographer David Imus, whose new, highly detailed map of Alaska he modestly calls, as the article puts it, “the best overall map of the state ever made.” Based on the article, which goes into some detail about its creation and has an interesting digression into the differences between European and American map-making, I’m inclined to take his word for it. Sounds interesting.

Update Jan 2/05: Via Gadling, the product page for this map.

Ending January 15, a public exhibit by the Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library at the University of Texas at Arlington, Mapmaker’s Vision, Beholder’s Eyes: The Art of Maps. “The exhibit explores the elaborate artistry of cartography and seeks to answer a simple question: What is a beautiful map?”

Many cartographic happenings at the UTA: in addition to the Garrett Lectures (see also), check out the Library’s Cartographic Connections site.

Amtrak’s system map (768 KB PDF), which looks like it’s been redone recently, shows routes and cities, but it doesn’t indicate which trains serve a given city and route. The schematic on Wikipedia, however, does just that. Via Railroad.net’s Amtrak forum.

Yahoo! Maps now has traffic conditions, including construction sites and accidents (which it euphemistically calls “incidents”) for several U.S. cities. Via Matt.

A new blog, Urban Cartography, “dedicated to covering cartography and related subjects: urban planning, land use, imaging, GIS technology, urban studies and anything else that fits under the umbrella,” is now up and running. It apparently went live today, so it’s really early going, but I’m looking forward to some interesting reading.

A few airports use a Java-based web application to show (delayed) real-time air traffic patterns. The effect is extremely neat. Via Boing Boing.

A homemade New York subway map that includes other railroads and is based on the London diagram. Says the designer:

My design goals were to present a simple, clear diagram of all the passenger railroads in the city and just beyond, including all of the subway, PATH, the Newark subway, and the Staten Island Railway, and showing their relation to the Long Island Rail Road, Metro North, New Jersey Transit and Amtrak. I chose to use a very limited set of symbols to portray a very limited set of data, namely just the railroads and stations, station names, waterways. Use of a diagram allows enlarging of tangled areas to show the routings operated, making this more clear than a scale map.

Via Kottke.

Another geography quiz — this one requires you to drag and drop each state onto a map of the U.S. Harder than it looks: if you’re off by even a bit, it’ll mark it as wrong. Via Travel Writers. (See previous entries: U.S. States Geography Quiz; Geography Olympics; Geography Quizzes.)

Mark writes to tell us about the Dymaxion Projection Animation site: “The site is dedicated to showcasing Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Dymaxion Projection’ map. The Dymaxion Projection is reputed to be the most accurate flatmap of the earth, but I love the way it shows how connected each continent is.” Essentially, a globe is projected onto an icosahedron, which is then unfolded. There’s some animation on this site that shows the icosahedron opening up.

Mark (of Language Log) compares the Ukrainian electoral results with a linguistic map, to deal with the question of whether the electoral divide matches the linguistic (Ukrainian vs. Russian) one. Via Languagehat. (See previous entry: Ukrainian Presidential Election.)