Edgar Allen Beem’s essay in the May/June issue of Humanities serves as a good introduction to the Osher Map Library, a major map collection housed at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. The Osher Map Library turns up a lot in my online cartographic perambulations; it’s good to know the history and origins of the place and the people working there (e.g. faculty scholar Matthew Edney, who also directs the History of Cartography project, and director Ian Fowler, who joined in 2014).
Author: Jonathan Crowe
Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room. His essays and reviews have been published by AE, Calafia, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the Ottawa Citizen, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. He lives in Shawville, Quebec.
20th-Century New York
Gothamist looks at A Map of the Wondrous Isle of Manhattan, a pictorial map from 1926 created by Charles Vernon Farrow. [NYPL]
Mosaic map murals graced the Times Square Information Center when it opened in 1957. Now the building is a police substation, and there are hopes and expectations that an upcoming renovation of the substation will preserve the murals. [NYPL]
Maps and Civilization, Fourth Edition
While poking around the University of Chicago Press website yesterday, I noticed that a fourth edition of Norman J. W. Thrower’s history of cartography textbook, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, is due out this month: Amazon. The changes from the third edition (Amazon, iBooks) appear to be limited: “For the fourth edition of Maps and Civilization, Thrower has added an additional chapter that serves to bring the volume completely up to date.” My gaps in cartographic knowledge are such that I’ve never read this book; this may be an opportunity to rectify that.
Immigrants in France
Le Télégramme, a French newspaper based in Brittany, maps the percentage of immigrants in France by canton; a second map shows the largest source of immigration (Portugal shows up more than any other country). In French. [Maps Mania]
Gettysburg Electric Map to Reopen in June
The Electric Map of Gettysburg, now residing at the Hanover Heritage and Conference Center in Hanover, PA, is slated to open to the public in June. The Center will hold a public event on 3 June; if all goes well, the map program will open the following night. A director, responsible for the historical programming, has also been hired. See the announcement on Faceboook. [WMS]
Previously: The Return of the Electric Map.
The Concentric States of America
Neil Freeman of Fake Is the New Real takes this whole “reorganize the United States into states with equal population” thing just one step too far:
the United States divided into fifty concentric states with equal population pic.twitter.com/cLQ1wCdfbR
— Neil Freeman (@fitnr) April 12, 2016
My eyes are bleeding again. [Kottke]
Stanford’s David Rumsey Map Center Opens Today
As I mentioned earlier this month, the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University opens today (KQED coverage). To celebrate, there’s a grand opening and open house tonight from 6 to 7 PM at the Center, which is located on the fourth floor of Green Library. Presentations and workshops take place on the 20th and 21st, for which registration is required. That’s followed by a day-long open house on the 22nd.
The Center’s first exhibition, A Universe of Maps: Opening the David Rumsey Map Center, runs from today until 28 August (here’s the online version).
Previously: David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford Opens April 19.
Update: National Geographic coverage. [WMS]
The CDC, Cholera Maps and the 2011 Haiti Epidemic
A map on a display at the CDC’s in-house museum hides in plain sight what U.S. government authorities are reluctant to admit: the origin of the 2011 cholera epidemic in Haiti (a U.N. peacekeeping base housing a batallion from Nepal). All the more amazing by its juxtaposition with John Snow’s famous 1854 cholera map of London. It’s as if they wanted us to tell us something while being prevented from doing so.
When Italy Drew the World
An exhibition of 16th-century Italian maps, Quando l’Italia disegnava il mondo: Tesori Cartografici del Rinascimento Italiano (“When Italy Drew the world: Cartographic Treasures of the Italian Renaissance”) opened last Friday at the Palazzo del Podestà in Bergamo, Italy. It runs until 10 July. English summary. [Tony Campbell]
Mapping the Airways
Out this month from Amberley Publishing: Mapping the Airways. “Drawing on fascinating and unique material from the British Airways archive, curator Paul Jarvis focuses on the beautiful map artwork used over nearly 100 years of history to chart our voyages through the skies—from early adverts to twenty-first-century on-board moving maps—and the vital maps and charts used by pilots and navigators.” (The paperback edition seems to be delayed until June on the U.S. Amazon store, though you can still get the Kindle version.) Here’s a short piece about the book in the trade journal Advance. [Tony Campbell]
Average House Prices in the U.K.
British housing market analyst Neal Hudson posted a map of 2015 average house prices in the U.K. to Twitter last week. London is unsurprisingly dire.
It's been a while since I've published a map so here's 2015 house prices by postcode across Britain pic.twitter.com/p5AexvYokS
— Neal Hudson (@resi_analyst) April 14, 2016
More on Mapping Pluto’s Geology
Postdoctoral researcher Oliver White talks about creating maps of Pluto’s geology from New Horizons flyby imagery.
I have studied this area in great detail, and have defined each unit based on its texture and morphology—for example, whether it is smooth, pitted, craggy, hummocky or ridged. How well a unit can be defined depends on the resolution of the images that cover it. All of the terrain in my map has been imaged at a resolution of approximately 1,050 feet (320 meters) per pixel or better, meaning textures are resolved such that I can map units in this area with relative confidence.
By studying how the boundaries between units crosscut one another, I can also determine which units overlie others, and assemble a relative chronology (or timeline) for the different units; this work is aided by crater counts for the different terrains that have been obtained by other team members. I caution that owing to the complexity of the surface of Pluto, the work I’ve shown is in its early stages, and a lot more is still to be done.
Previously: Mapping Pluto’s Geology.
Cartographic Japan
Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps came out last month from the University of Chicago Press. It’s a collection of 58 academic essays edited by Kären Wigen, Sugimoto Fumiko and Cary Karacas (see the table of contents) that provide, in the words of the publisher, “close analysis of one hundred maps from the late 1500s to the present day, each one treated as a distinctive window onto Japan’s tumultuous history.” Amazon, iBooks. [WMS]
The Trig Pillar at 80
The Ordnance Survey are marking the 80th anniversary of the Retriangulation of Great Britain, which began on this day in 1936. More from BBC News. Events include the Trig Pillar Trail Challenge, which invites people to post pictures to social media of one of 25 selected trig (triangulation) pillars (the #TrigPillar80 hashtag is very busy this morning). There are Flickr galleries of various trig pillars from Flickr user Andrew (who took the one above in 2013) and (of course) the Ordnance Survey.
The Huffington Post Maps Trump’s World
The Huffington Post is, it’s safe to say, not a fan of Donald Trump. It’s produced a couple of maps satirizing the Republican frontrunner and his policies. The first came last summer:
The second came this past week, and is actually sourced, based on his own statements (but not direct quotes):
