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Miscellaneous Globes

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Random and miscellaneous globe items:

Roy Frederic Heinrich, "James Wilson, the Vermont globe-maker, Bradford, Vermont, 1810." Library of Congress.
Roy Frederic Heinrich, illustration of James Wilson, n.d. Library of Congress.

James Wilson was America’s first globe maker; his Bradford, Vermont-based globe factory opened in 1813. Geolounge points to the above illustration of Wilson, undated but from the early 20th century, by Roy Frederic Heinrich.

Dennis Townsend, "Townsend's Patent Folding Globe," 1869. Norman B. Leventhal Map Center.
Dennis Townsend, “Townsend’s Patent Folding Globe,” 1869. Norman B. Leventhal Map Center.

The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center: “Dennis Townsend, a Vermont schoolteacher, created this collapsible, portable, and inexpensive paper globe for students as an alternative to the large, more expensive globes available mainly in schools and libraries.”

In my post about old British films about globemaking I said, “These films fascinate me because they describe a kind of globemaking—layers of plaster, paper globe gores, and varnish—that I don’t think happens any more.” On The Map Room’s Facebook page, a commenter replied that Lander and May use the same methods today. Handmade by Chris Adams, these artisanal globes appear to be closer in class and price to Bellerby than to Replogle.

Finally, via the Washington Map Society’s Facebook page, news that a book about 17th- and 18th-century cartographer and globemaker Vincenzo Coronelli, Marica Milanesi’s Vincenzo Coronell Cosmographer, 1650-1718, is now available, though apparently not easily.

New Biography of 17th-Century Cartographer John Ogilby

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
John Ogilby, The Road From London to the Lands End,, 1675.
John Ogilby, The Road From London to the Lands End, 1675.

nine-lives-ogilbyJohn Ogilby, the Scottish cartographer who in 1675 published the Britannia atlas—essentially the first road atlas of Great Britain—is the subject of a new biography by Alan Ereira. The Nine Lives of John Ogilby: Britain’s Master Mapmaker and His Secrets came out last month from Duckworth Overlook. (Direct Amazon UK link, though it’s available from third-party sellers on other stores.) From the description I gather it will follow the argument made in the 2008 BBC series Terry Jones’ Great Map Mystery, which Ereira wrote and directed: that the Britannia was an invasion map designed to facilitate a Catholic takeover. (My understanding of this is third-hand: I haven’t seen the book or the series.) [WMS]

Other Gift Guides

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

If you can’t find what you’re looking for in my own gift guides to map books and calendars, here are a few gift guides assembled by my map-blogging colleagues and map companies:

Any others out there?

November Sea Ice

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

eo-sea-ice

NASA Earth Observatory: “In November, the sea ice extent averaged 9.08 million square kilometers (3.52 million square miles)—the lowest November extent in the satellite record. The yellow line shows the median extent from 1981 to 2010, and gives an idea of how conditions this November strayed from the norm.” Also shows sea ice extent for previous years dating back to 1978. Hudson Bay was icebound in November not that long ago.

Previously: Mapping Arctic Sea Ice.

His Favourite Map: Natural Heritage of Texas

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Natural Heritage of Texas, 1986. Map, 54.8″×56.4″. Map #10786, Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
Natural Heritage of Texas, 1986. Map, 54.8″×56.4″. Map #10786, Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.

James Harkins of the Texas General Land Office shares his favourite map: the 1986 Natural Heritage of Texas map, which featured endangered and vulnerable Texas wildlife.

I was three years old when this map was released. When I was at Moore Elementary (home of the fighting Armadillos!) in the late 1980s, and early 1990s, I specifically remembered this map because it was huge! The Natural Heritage Map of Texas is 4-feet by 4-feet, and it hung in the school cafeteria, to the left of the stage where so many school assemblies had occurred. The map is colorful, big and filled with animals. To be honest, at the time, the animals are what drew my attention, but the map always stuck in my mind because it was the first large wall map I had ever seen. More than anything, though, there was an ocelot in my face, and in the face of every other elementary student in the building who walked up to look at this map. At the time, I thought an ocelot was kind of like a mix between a house cat and a lion or a tiger, and a lion or tiger was really cool. I was hooked! I would always look at the ocelot, as well as the other animals, and the map, and think about what it all meant.

[Texas Map Society]

An Economic Geography of the United States

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Computed communities subject to interpretive analysis. From Nelson and Rae 2016.
Tract-to-tract commutes of 160 km or less. From Nelson and Rae 2016.
A commuter flow-based regionalization of the United States. From Nelson and Rae 2016.

In a paper published in PLOS One, Garrett Dash Nelson and Alasdair Rae explore whether megaregions—i.e., a region centred on a major metropolitan area—can be determined algorithmically, using commuter flow data. In the end they conclude that “any division of space into unit areas will have to take into account a ‘common sense’ interpretation of the validity and cohesion of the regions resulting from an algorithmic approach. For this reason, the visual heuristic method coupled with the algorithmic method offers a good combination of human interpretation and statistical precision.” In the process, they’ve generated a series of maps that are fascinating on several levels, including a final map of megaregions that combines algorithmic results with visual heuristics (i.e., human judgment). [Atlas Obscura]

Austrian Presidential Election Cartograms

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
austromorph.space
austromorph.space

The second round re-vote of the Austrian presidential election took place yesterday. (The first round took place on 24 April; a repeat of the second round, narrowly won by Alexander Van der Bellen on 22 May, was ordered by the Constitutional Court.) Full, final results are not yet available, but austromorph.space has created the above cartogram of the preliminary results—showing, as you might expect, the strength of winning independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen in the cities; support for the far-right FPÖ’s Norbert Hofer shrinks when you change from a map to a cartogram.

There are other cartograms of earlier rounds of the Austrian presidential election on the austromorph.space website.

‘The Massive Scope of America’s Infrastructure’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
"Pipelines." The Washington Post, 1 December 2016.
“Pipelines.” The Washington Post, 1 December 2016.

The Washington Post has six maps of U.S. flights, shipping lanes, electrical transmission lines, railroads and pipelines that highlight “the massive scope of America’s infrastructure” that will presumably be the focus of future Trump administration spending. [Benjamin Hennig]

Mapping Arctic Sea Ice

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

arctic-warm-reanalyzer

Something’s going on in the Arctic. As the Washington Post reported last month, the Arctic Ocean was far, far warmer than normal—about 20 degrees Celsius higher than average. (Meanwhile, the air over Sibera is at record cold levels.) According to the Post, the higher temperatures are the result of record low amounts of thinning sea ice, as well as warm air being brought north by an increasingly errant jet stream.

NASA has been tracking sea ice levels and thickness by looking at the age of the ice in the sea ice cap. The video above shows “how Arctic sea ice has been growing and shrinking, spinning, melting in place, and drifting out of the Arctic for the past three decades. The age of the ice is represented in shades of blue-gray to white, with the brightest whites representing the oldest ice.”

The ESA reports that their CryoSat satellite “has found that the Arctic has one of the lowest volumes of sea ice of any November, matching record lows in 2011 and 2012.” The animated GIF below shows the change in November sea ice from 2011 to 2016, as observed by CryoSat.

esa-arctic-sea-ice-thickness-nov-2011-16

The Chimney Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The big news in the map world this week is a 17th-century map that was found in Aberdeen, Scotland, stuffed up a chimney to stop drafts. Discovered during renovations, the map was handed over to the National Library of Scotland, which found it to be in very bad shape: the 2.2×1.6-metre map, identified as work by the Dutch engraver Gerald Valck, was disintegrating, with pieces falling off every time it was moved. The Library’s restoration process is featured in an article in the winter 2016 issue of their magazine, Discover (direct PDF link), and in two videos about the map: one I’ve posted above, plus another, shorter video. You should take a look at them all: they present a fascinating look inside the conservation process. More coverage at Atlas Obscura, BBC News and Smithsonian.com.

Iwan Bala’s Controversial Brexit Exhibition

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

iwan-balaRunning until 30 November at the Penarth Pier Pavilion in Penarth, Wales, Dyma Gariad (fel y moroedd)/Here is a love (deep as oceans) is an exhibition by Welsh artist Iwan Bala. It’s an angry, provocative collection of caricatures and maps about Brexit, from a strongly Remain perspective, done in a style described by the Penarth Times as “the rapid often stumbled, crossed out, corrected, blotted, re-adjusted rush to put thoughts on paper and the attempt of a poet to capture a line before it ebbs in the memory.” As the Pavilion describes the exhibition:

Responding to the result of the electorate’s vote on the UK’s EU membership, Bala began to make (alongside politicized ‘maps’), satirical caricatures of the principle [sic] players in the lead up to and result of Brexit. An Artist has a duty to comment, protest and become an agent provocateur through the medium of visual communication. Cartoons have a long and illustrious history, and have always lurked somewhere in the background environs of his artwork.

They may have been anticipating some pushback—the exhibition also had a content warning—and indeed the exhibition has gotten some angry responses sufficient that the Pavilion had to issue a statement defending their decision to host it. That alone tells me it was a success: art provokes. [WMS]

Missing Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Quartz takes a look at the Missing Maps project, which I suppose can best be described as a way to jumpstart mapping the unmapped developing regions of the world with OpenStreetMap. What’s interesting about Missing Maps is how it systematically deals out tasks to people best able to do them: remote volunteers trace imagery, community volunteers do the tagging and labelling. There’s even an app, MapSwipe, that gives its users “the ability to swipe through satellite images and indicate if they contain features like houses, roads or paths. These are then forwarded onto Missing Maps for precise marking of these features.” [WMS]