This is wild. The Earth Puzzle is a 442-piece jigsaw puzzle with a difference: based on an equal-area icosahedral projection, the puzzle can be built from any starting point, and in any number of configurations: there is no defined centre or edge. One of Nervous System’s infinity puzzles (one for the Moon is also available), it costs $120 and (at the moment) ships in three weeks (so if you’re shopping for the holidays, get on it). All is explained at Nervous System’s blog. [Kenneth Field]
Remember how Atlas Obscura put out a call for Dungeons & Dragons maps? They’ve received a pile of entries and are featuring two dozen of them: “[Y]our D&D maps are more incredible than we could have imagined. Every single one calls out for exploration.” Some of them are familiar in form, others are really out there, which I appreciate.
Previously: Atlas Obscura Wants Your D&D Maps.
The FCC has approved the use of the European Galileo satellite navigation system in mobile devices in the United States. Galileo is similar to GPS and the Russian GLONASS, but the satellite constellation won’t be complete until 2020 or so. Even so, devices like recent iPhones (from the 8 and X on) have support built-in. (Many smartphones have had GLONASS support for years.) FCC press release.
It looks like every map style is doomed to be replicated in ArcGIS Pro. See, for example, Warren Davidson’s Vintage Road Atlas: which renders Toronto and its surrounding area in the style of a 1950s tourist map. It’s double-sided and is designed to be folded (which is to say that there are some upside-down bits). The ArcGIS Pro style—which is called Are We There Yet? and can be downloaded here—even simulates the creases and weathering of an old folded map, though it does so a little too regularly if you look closely. (Also there are some inconsistencies in road lines and highway markers: the map is prisoner of its data.)
Previously: Mapping with Style; Maps Middle-earth Style: By Hand and by ArcGIS.
During World War I, Australian troops staying at nearby Hurdcott Camp carved a gigantic map of Australia into a Wiltshire hillside. Chalk gravel was used to fill shallow trenches to create an outline map some 150 feet wide with 18-foot-tall letters. Since then, despite a restoration in the 1950s and its designation as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the map has faded, but for the past four years the Map of Australia Trust has been working on restoring the map. It was finished in time for Armistice Day. More from BBC News (video) and Historic England. [Jonathan Potter]
British map and travel bookstore Stanfords is moving its London store from its venerable Long Acre location, where they’ve been since 1901 (!), to a new building on Mercer Walk, all of 200 metres away. They cite a need for more back-office space for their online business. The new store is officially scheduled to open in January, but the ground floor will be open as a gift boutique later this month. [TimeOut London/MAPS-L]
NASA Earth Observatory published a Landsat 8 image, dated 8 November, of the massive Camp Fire in northern California. Meanwhile, Maps Mania links to several California wildfire-related maps and resources.
Maps of bus, tram and trolley networks are, I think, more likely to use geographical maps of the city’s road network as their base layer than subway and rail maps. That’s not always the case—nor has it always been the case. Take this 1947 map of London’s trolleybus and tram routes, executed by Fred J. H. Elston. Cameron Booth finds that it has “more in common with modern best practices for transit diagrams than with something that’s now 70 years old.” On the other hand, Ollie O’Brien, writing at Mapping London, thinks that this map proves that “the simplicity of the tube map doesn’t translate very well to London’s complex road network. So perhaps this is why the idea almost didn’t survive for above-ground networks, and London’s more modern bus maps (now discontinued) have always used the actual geographical network.” Christopher Wyatt, sharing the map on Twitter, notes a big, Westminster-shaped hole in the trolley network that matches London’s speed limit map: “It does seem as though there is a historical pattern of aversion to transportation equity from Westminster.”
The first map produced by the Ordnance Survey, their blog reminds us, was this map of Kent. Published in 1801 at the scale of two inches to one mile (1:31,680), it took three years to complete; the OS started in Kent over fears of a French invasion. As such, the map “focused on communication routes and included hill shading to ensure men at arms could interpret the landscape with precision. Over time, this map design became less focused on these elements and was developed to appeal to a much wider audience.”
The definitive history of the early years of the Ordnance Survey is Rachel Hewitt’s Map of a Nation, which I reviewed in 2012.
How does navigation work on a flat world? Admittedly this is not a question that comes up outside flat earth societies, at least not in the real world, but fantasy worlds aren’t always spherical. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, for example, started off as a flat world, but became round during a cataclysmic event. Before that, the Númenóreans (Aragorn’s ancestors, for those not totally up on their Tolkien lore) were held to be the greatest seafarers in the world: “mariners whose like shall never be again since the world was diminished,” as The Silmarillion puts it. The problem is, a flat earth has implications for navigation: many known methods simply wouldn’t work.
In a piece I wrote for Tor.com, “The Dúnedain and the Deep Blue Sea: On Númenórean Navigation,” I try to puzzle out how they could have navigated the oceans of a flat world. I come up with a solution or two, within the limitations of my math abilities. (I’m sure readers who have more math than I do will be able to come up with something better.) It assumes a certain familiarity with Tolkien’s works, and it draws rather heavily on John Edward Huth’s Lost Art of Finding Our Way, which I reviewed here, not at all coincidentally, last month.
Mapping Fictional Worlds is a project to create maps and virtual spaces from literary texts. This seems to be a machine learning project: using natural language processing to build a world around a text that didn’t necessarily come with a map. One component, highlighted by the Guardian, is LitCraft: creating literary worlds using Minecraft. Such as Treasure Island. More at the project’s Chronotopic Cartographies blog. [David Garcia]
Atlas Obscura is looking for your Dungeons and Dragons maps. “Not unlike the maps found in many fantasy novels, DIY D&D maps act as blueprints to imaginary spaces. Usually, once a campaign is complete, these maps get tossed out or put up on a shelf somewhere, but it doesn’t have to be this way! We want to help share your dungeon maps with the world.” There’s a form at the link, and instructions on how to share your map; they’ll post their favourites in an upcoming article.
If you missed Worlds Imagined, the imaginary maps exhibition at Texas A&M University last year, fear not. The 100-page exhibition catalogue is still available for download (if no longer in print), and while it doesn’t always show the entire map, it’s a hell of a reference, equal in scope and comprehensiveness to J. B. Post’s 1979 Atlas of Fantasy, only more up to date. The exhibition curators also put together a video tour: the full version (above) is 25 minutes long; there’s a three-minute quick tour as well.
Previously: Fantasy Maps Exhibit at Texas A&M Library.
In April amateur cartographer Philip Kearney created “United States of Apathy,” a map that imagined the 2016 U.S. presidential election results if nonvoters were counted as a vote for “nobody,” in which case “nobody” would have won the electoral college by a landslide. Esri cartographer Jim Herries recently collaborated with Kearney on an interactive version that explores the phenomenon of apathetic voters in more depth. [CityLab]
The Tabula Peutingeriana is a cartographic marvel—a 13th-century copy of what is supposed to be a 4th- or 5th-century diagram of the Roman road network— but it’s not exactly easy for the modern map reader to parse. The Tabula Peutingeriana Animated Edition abstracts the map into a diagram. It’s part of Jean-Baptiste Piggin’s attempts to draw meaning out of the map; for more of which see his posts about the Tabula here.
Previously: Books About the Tabula Peutingeriana.
