Map #153, A Subway Map of Web Trends 2.0: Pleased to see that ET has his own stop, on the connection between the Technology and Design lines.

-- Larry House (email), August 22, 2007

another collection of maps/visualizations with an academic bent to them:

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?index=2&id=2&domain=

and here's an interesting transit map (as discussed elsewhere on this board)

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?index=235&id=235&domain=

Definitely worth a browse...

-- Fraser Moffatt (email), September 4, 2007

Dear ET'ers

Here is a very parochial website that shows a range of 1840's tithe maps of Cheshire UK with corresponding 2006 mapping. In one web page they allow the user to shift either the tithe map or the modern map - so those of us who live in a particular location (try the postcode CH48 3JP where my Mum lives) can see both where it is today AND what tithe it had 150 years ago. Both maps move smoothly in synchrony and one view allows a description of who owned that package of land, who lived there and land use (as well as area measured in acres, roods and perches)! You can also overlay ownership information or land use and include township information.

What is quite amusing is that the level of detail and information content that was available in 1844 at the precise location I am typing this (CH48 3JG) now can tell me in very clear detail the size of plot, land use and ownership of the precise square metre of the Earths surface that I am sitting on better than I can get for todays land usage in 95% of the Earths surface.

Best wishes

Matt

-- Matt R (email), September 14, 2007

I want to submit the site http://www.radweit.de with its collection of cut-and-paste bike routes in Germany, which bear a striking similarity to "A New Plan of the Road from London to Dover, and from Calais to Paris" as depicted on the spread 112--113 of "Envisioning Information".

All the best.

-- Andreas Scherer (email), October 9, 2007

On Display for a Day

I suspect that ET readers will be interested in reading about the Tabula Peutingeriana which is a copy of an ancient Roman roadmap of Europe. It is not on display due to its fragility and light sensitivity, however, yesterday it was displayed for one day as part of Unesco's Memory of the World Register (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7113810.stm). The map is almost a linear East-West mapping of important roads and destinations across Europe and Asia.

Wikipedia has a good entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana) including a high resolution facsimile that can be downloaded.

best wishes

Matt

-- Matt R (email), November 27, 2007

I really like this visual display of the world's rivers and mountains. Does anyone know more about it?

-- Mark Neigh (email), March 5, 2008

The map you show is from an American Atlas in the mid to late 19th century, likely either the Johnson Atlas or Colton Atlas. Similar maps were found a few decades earlier in British and French Atlases. For a few different versions of these types of maps visit www.davidrumsey.com ; select 'directory' and under the heading 'what' (for subject matter) find the subject 'mountains and rivers.' In addition to physical geopgraphy data of the mountains and rivers, elevations of temperate zones are noted. My area if knowledge is mostly of Holy Land maps of the 15th - 17th century so I can't offer much information on these relatively modern "antique maps."

Regards, Ron Hekier

-- Ron Hekier (email), March 7, 2008

Here is an article at the website of The Planetary Society describing a map I made with the unusual property of folding up to make a model of an asteroid:

Phobos arts and crafts

I hope that comes through as a hyperlink. From the preview it doesn't look to. If not, cut and paste those words into a search browser.

Here's the map:

By the preview it looks a little large; hope that's OK or you'll feel free to reduce the size.

• PHobos_MaxRidge_POSTER.jpg

-- Chuck Clark (email), April 18, 2008

The BBC will be airing a new TV series called, "Britain from Above" starting this coming weekend (August 10th, 2008).

This video clip teaser on the BBC website shows some beautiful maps of Britain displaying travel and communications data.

-- Katherine Davoli (email), August 4, 2008

Winnie-the-Pooh map

-- Edward Tufte, November 24, 2008

-- Edward Tufte, December 2, 2008

This sort of "aerial photo as a map" is now commonplace with the advent of web-based mapping services, and the technique of using aerial photography as the basis for maps is well established. I work with oil and gas pipeline maps that were historically hand drawn annotations on top of a printed aerial photo strips. These days they are computer generated from databases of imagery and vector map data.

The issue of the level of abstraction occurred to me when I saw the references to this as a map. A photo on its own is a literal picture of the terrain, albeit with changes in appearance due to the atmosphere (when present!), the camera, surface elevation and so on. A map would have other properties; often scale, location and some sense of abstraction to identify features of interest. So this photo seems to be a real map as it shows scale, a coordinate system and the flight path. The information content is very high, in that the area is described in great detail, but the level of abstraction is very low - it is a photo of the lunar surface with a flight path marked. A far cry from the work of a Swiss cartographer's pen!

I'm interested as to whether the general population still draws a distinction between traditional "drawn" maps and the aerial photos they see online. Google Maps offers users a map view and satellite view, maybe reinforcing this distinction. I wonder if readers, perhaps more familiar with a higher level of abstraction on their maps, consider this a map or not.

(I have a few pipeline map examples handy if an illustration would be of interest)

-- Nick Park (email), December 2, 2008

The Apollo map above, which visited the moon, is a fine example of a mapped image (see Beautiful Evidence, chapter 1), nicely combining moon photographs with overlaid cartographic coordinates, flight trajectories, and scales of measurement. It appears from this sheet that the map is constructed from a mosaic of photographs taken at different times (note the varying tones and shadows at lower left and lower right).

The Apollo map is printed as a somewhat coarse black-and-white halftone, with a finer dot than a newspaper photograph but coarser dot than a coated-paper newsmagazine.

Shown above is one of the 24 sheets. Perhaps the 1 meter long, but folded, cyclogram (Visual Explanations, pp. 92-95), is a better method of map management.

I have only slightly mixed feelings about astronauts and cosmonauts selling off government property at auctions (a few astronauts run rather aggressive souvenir shops) because I so like to see information displays in action. The cyclogram, for example, is an extraordinary piece of work and so I was happy to enrich, via Sotheby's, cosmonaut Georgi Grechko, who later provided the extraordinary annotation used on the cyclogram poster and for the versions in Visual Explanations.

-- Edward Tufte, December 2, 2008

The apparently wind-blown moon flag is always enchanting since there is no atmosphere and thus no wind on the moon.

The lack of a light-scattering atmosphere produces intensely dark moon shadows that caused problems for the first astronauts operating equipment on the moon because it was so dark in the parts of the equipment falling in the pitch-black shadows. There is a sequence of moon-shadow pictures in Beautiful Evidence, p. 99, in the discussion of Galileo's report and drawings of moon craters.

What does the moon look like to astronauts through the orbiting Apollo's windows compared to the gray images on the map, and at what time of moon day? This is starting to sound like our thread on runway incursions.

(And kindly Contributor Nick Park's pipeline examples would be most welcome.)

-- Edward Tufte, December 2, 2008

The Apollo map/photo hybrid is, as ET states, a fine example of a mapped image. Unfortunately, the items that accompany the map and serve to provide evidence of authenticity, show, at least to me, a distasteful overabundance of marketing spin and pitch.

The photo/map, with Duke's annotations, is grand in that it is nearly all content. The other items, although likely genuine, seem less impressive because of someone's attempt to make them look more impressive.

To me, the first sign that a pitchman is involved is the punctuation on the hand-written note. Quotation marks surround Orion. An exclamation point terminates the first sentence. "on" is underlined in the second sentence to reinforce the fact that a map that went to the moon really was on the moon. Without the exclamation point and underlining, am I to be less convinced?

And Duke, throughout the additional pieces of evidence, changes from being "MODULE PILOT" in the hand-written note, to "Astonaut" in the letter-head, to "Moonwalker" (in a slanted font no less!) beneath his signature. If you are not convinced now, wait! There's more!

Exclamation points also invade the other text: "... shown here on the Moon!", "... our historic lunar landing!", "... from the surface of the Moon!"

The letterhead does include the Apollo 16 insignia, but no mention of NASA (copyright issues??).

---

I'd love to have the map, and my supposition is that it is real. I suppose the market demands that things such as this need authentication and back up documentation. I'm just disappointed in the swarmy marketing approach to the evidence.

In 1992, I attended the middle three games of the National League Championship Series in Pittsburg, when my brother was living there. (Braves won in seven games, scoring 3 in the bottom of the ninth to win 3-2.) A few weeks later, long after Sid Bream had scored the winning run to send the Braves to the World Series (as Barry Bonds made a less-than- stellar throw to home plate), I got a box in the mail from Pittsburg. My brother had somehow acquired a piece of the red, white, and blue bunting that had hung at Three Rivers during Games 3, 4, and 5. He never told me how he got it. And since I have no market-driven authenticity documents to back it up, I guess no one will believe me. :-)

But I still hang it on July 4th!

Rafe

-- rafe donahue (email), December 2, 2008

The Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL produced a video entitled "The Civil War in Four Minutes" which can be googled with that title. It is the map of the eastern United States with a moving boundary of the North/South line and a running tabulator of the North and South casualties in the lower right hand corner. Key battles pop up chronologically and Lincoln's terms are identified. I think the music is from Ken Burns' documentary. The map details are fuzzy, but you get the idea.

-- S. Ira Grossman (email), December 11, 2008

I came across this interesting map of 20th century architecture created by architectural historian Charles Jenks, reposted to Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/archidose/3088862107/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Jenks calls it an evolutionary tree, but it reminds me of the idea maps that were shown and discussed in Beautiful Evidence.

-- Greg La Vardera (email), January 1, 2009

From one of my favorite magazines, a heinous graphic that is technically a map, but is more accurately described as an effective summation of most of the attributes of bad design described in VDQI and later Tufte works. I'm sure others will add their own observations, but below are a few that quickly jumped out at me.

1. The various statistic are located on a stylized map of the United States, but the location of the data is not related to its map location. The map seems to be entirely gratuitous, a waste of two dimensions of information--the x-y location of the data. It is also confused me as I struggled to determine if there is a reason "the number of major conflicts" is in California and the "Gross federal debt" in New England.
2. Chartjunk abounds. Tiny paper cut-outs for troops, little power cords, half-open cell phones. Enough said.
3. Volumes represent single numbers, a classic (bad) example from VDQI. My favorites are the hearts in Texas, the gold bars in Washington, the wireless video game controllers in Oregon, and the Monopoly man in the Mid-West. I don't need a cartoon to compare two numbers.
4. Over quantitization of results. The percentage of wireless-only household is rounded from the 2- or 3-significant digits of data to a whole cell phone icon, reducing the fidelity of the data from 4.2% and 16.4% to 1 or 4 phones.
5. Oil consumption shown on different time scales. Consumption in 2000 of 19.7 million barrels per day versus 19.5 million barrels per day in 2008 (through September). I am forced to assume this is simply total 2008 consumption divided by the number of days through September, but I'm not sure. Even worse, oil consumption varies by season, so excluding the last (Winter) quarter of the year skews the data, but we're not sure by how much.
6. The icon for Lockheed Martin's sales is shown as a commercial aircraft. Presumably their sales are included because they are the nation's largest defense contractor, but Lockheed Martin has not built commercial aircraft for some time. Perhaps something defense related that they actually build would have made more sense. Or data for Boeing or Airbus could have been plotted instead.
7. The use of a widening fat man to plot obesity statistics is disturbing, but did anyone else need to be told that there are 50 states in the union...twice?

-- Adam Wuerl (email), January 18, 2009

Maps of the vertical (for TOM SACHS)

Rock climbing is full of strange & unusual maps of the vertical, with standardized notation that tells us the difficulty of each pitch of the route, type of climbing, fixed gear/bolts, gear to bring, descent route, and identifying features that help locate the route (which can be quite difficult).

Beyond their obvious utility, the topos serve as a visual history of the sport, when comparing one guidebook edition to the next - somewhat like comparing political maps of the world through time. New routes are added, features fall off, bolts are placed, former "aid" routes are free-climbed - acts which reflect changing standards about new routes and increasing skill levels among first ascentionists.

Here's a sample page from the regular guidebook showing (E) "West Crack" in Tuolumne Meadows; the page has a nice mix of notation and features. Lines represent cracks, X's represent bolts, and hash marks show roofs, ledges, corners and aretes. Last time on it a few years ago we were followed by a group including TM Herbert, one of the pioneers of Yosemite climbing, who is still going strong in his 70's. I look at the topo and remember him acting out the reach & twist to grab a key hold in the "5.8 buckets" noted at the end of pitch 1, useful information that no flatland guidebook could convey in quite the same way.

-Tad

San Francisco

-- Tad Borek (email), February 3, 2009

The beautiful charts of Clarence Larkin

I searched for an appropriate thread to add these to, and this is the best I could find.

Clarence Larkin (1850-1924) published the seminal book on "Dispensational Theology", a branch of theology dealing with the nature of time and prophecy in relation to the Bible. In his book, Dispensational Truth (1920), he created a number of truly gorgeous charts. I hasten to add that it is not necessary to be a theologian, or even a Christian, to see what a wonderful set of charts these are. In fact one of their major strengths is that, like all good charts, they make perfectly clear what they intend to represent without requiring prior knowledge of their subject.

My favorite chart, "The Mountain Peaks of Prophecy" is a marvelous example of displaying 4D information in a 2D format (source: www.blueletterbible.org):

Here's another (same source):

More of Mr. Larkin's images (in fact, the entire book) may be found here.

-- Steve Roach (email), April 7, 2009

The realistic chart of John Rapkin

The following chart presents a realistic comparison of the heights of various waterfalls.

It is a subset of an illustration titled "A Comparative View Of The Principal Waterfalls, Islands, Lakes, Rivers and Mountains, In The Western Hemisphere." published in "The Illustrated Atlas, And Modern History Of The World Geographical, Political, Commercial & Statistical," edited By R. Montgomery Martin in 1851. The electronic version is available in the David Rumsey Collection (http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~779~60084:A-Comparative-View-Of-The-Principal?qvq=q:rapkin;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=1&trs=85).

I found this example of chart leading to the incapacity to compare the heights. On my point of view, the realistic aspect of the representation coupled to a perspective drawing of each element (waterfall) toward the center and an organization of the elements with the smallest in the middle induce the interpretation of a cirque of waterfalls. Linked to this perception effect comes a sense of homogeneity in heights.

The low visibility of the scales on both sides of the illustration and the indirect link between the name of the waterfall and its illustration put the reading at a stronger disadvantage.

• compview.jpg

-- Abram Pointet (email), April 8, 2009

bsd

these maps make me a little dizzy. certainly quirky.

enjoy. BW

http://schulzeandwebb.com/hat/

-- BW (email), May 22, 2009

The strange map of today about ring roads (No. 384, 25 May 2009) is a good example of how poor design can result in a virtually undecipherable mess. The compiler of the page says that "As ring roads go, London's is one of the longer ones - which can with some difficulty be gleaned from this map." This was too polite: I would be more inclined to say that it can be gleaned with a great deal of difficulty if you think it worth the effort. The person who designed the map seems to have been more interested in producing a gaudy result, looking something like a flower, than in conveying any information.

As one of the things I learned (or at least became conscious of) from reading The Visual Display of Quantitative Information was that producing bad graphics can be a form of lying it is interesting to note from some of the comments that the principal claim of the map, that Houston has the Longest Ring Road in the World, is not in fact true.

-- Athel Cornish-Bowden (email), May 25, 2009

-- Matt R (email), July 6, 2009

Dear ET,

-- Matt R (email), July 10, 2009

Cartographic treasures show little change in city life

24 Jun 2009

A unique collection of rare Manchester maps reveals how worries about congestion and binge drinking were just as prevalent 100 years ago as they are today.

The drawings, part of an exhibition of 80 maps unseen in public for up to 200 years, can be seen at The University of Manchester's John Rylands Library opening on 25 June.

It includes an excerpt of the first large scale survey of the city published by William Green in 1794.

And a 1945 map shows how the city centre was slated for transformation into a modernist utopia along the lines of inner city Birmingham. Thankfully the plans never went ahead.

An "isochron" map shows how long it took to commute to the city centre in 1914 and was produced by Manchester Council to convince the movers and shakers of the time that tramways and traffic policemen were needed - echoing the rejected Transport Innovation Fund congestion charge proposals of last year.

"The congestion of 1914 shown in the map bears a strong similarity to the traffic hotspots of today," said Chris Perkins, geography lecturer from The University of Manchester and one of the exhibition's curators.

"It's amazing that it took up to 50 minutes to get to places as far out as Stockport and Timperley - a similar figure to now."

On display at 'Mapping Manchester' is material held by The University of Manchester and other institutions in the city, including generous loans of materials from the Manchester City Library and Archives, Chetham's Library and the Manchester Geographical Society.

An 1889 map of licensed alcohol sellers produced by the United Kingdom Alliance - one of the period's temperance societies - also has an eerily resemblance to the binge drinking hotspots of today, says fellow curator and geography lecturer Dr Martin Dodge also from The University of Manchester.

"This fascinating map published in the Manchester Guardian was purposefully designed to show that the biggest drinkers lived in Manchester's poorest areas - just like today."

"It certainly provoked a strong response from correspondents to the Guardian who were outraged by the 'low morals' of working people," he said.

The exhibition shows Manchester's first ever planning maps, hand-printed 220 years ago for wealthy citizens who displayed them in their homes and offices as a status symbol.

The maps capture the start of the massive growth of the city at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Mr Perkins said: "In 1945 the Council planned a modernist utopia of straight roads, wide boulevards, roundabouts, and other civic buildings."

"It was part of a 200-page vision for universal education, healthcare and low congestion."

He added: "If they had got their way, they would have covered over parts of the river Irwell, bulldozed Victoria station, and built a wide boulevard between the Town Hall and Deansgate."

"Manchester would have probably looked more like inner city Birmingham than the winding medieval streets we know today."

"Thankfully as cash was so tight in the post-war years, the plans were never implemented."

Also shown in the exhibition is an insert given out free to Manchester Guardian readers in 1926 to celebrate the city's Civic Week.

Dr. Dodge said: "The map was a navigational device but also an elegant attempt to depict Manchester as a city of parks, education and good transport."

"There was of course no depiction of the city's less attractive areas - such as its slums!"


Click here to view the article.

-- Marek Karliner (email), August 26, 2009

Scents of the City

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/29/opinion/20090829-smell-map-feature.html

-- R.C. JONES (email), August 30, 2009

Source: Swann, Autographs, auction catalog, October 29, 2009.

-- Edward Tufte, October 21, 2009

Mapping character interactions in movies

Three carefully crafted, ingenious charts followed by two delightful zingers....

Movie Narrative Charts

-- Bob Danielson (email), November 10, 2009

Best movies of all time meets the London Underground map - what could be more wonderful? Andrea

-- Andrea Cesari (email), November 10, 2009

A Tom Gauld map of his holiday home. Complete with extensive key.

Best wishes

Matt

-- Matt R (email), November 23, 2009

Winnie-the-Pooh map

(click to see larger)

Source: Sotheby's catalogue, English Literature, History, Children's Books & Illustrations, London, 17 December 2009, p. 92.

-- Edward Tufte, December 3, 2009

How to plan your way around the solar system while watching your fuel gauge. Another well-executed graphic from XKCD.com.

http://www.xkcd.com/681/

-- Aaron Symanski (email), January 4, 2010

Astonishingly beautiful 15-sheet maps series of ancient courses of lower Mississippi from Harold N. Fisk's 1944 Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River.

Mid-res pictures available at Radical Cartography. Full-res originals can be downloaded at US Army corps.

• fiskall_sm.png

-- Ivan Poukhkal (email), January 18, 2010

Some beautfiul maps of 12 favourite art galleries in Tokyo from the book ArtSpace Tokyo - http://artspacetokyo.com/artmaps/.

Matt

-- Matt R (email), March 7, 2010

Flickr member Eric Fischer, has created two very interesting sets of data maps:

When photographs are taken of a particular place, and then uploaded to a public forum, and tagged with the location that the photograph captured, this is called geotagging. Using scripts to mine the Flickr and Picasa public photograph collections, Fischer created the Geotaggers World Atlas of location-centric photographs, which he subsequently color coded based on who likely snapped the shot -- locals vs. tourists. In the introductory text, he says:

"Some people interpreted the Geotaggers' World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in places that tourists don't visit."

I live in Pittsburgh, whose color coded map is shown here, and I'm very curious about some of these apparent hot spots -- what's so interesting over there? I'll be finding out soon. And I will definitely check his atlases the next time I travel for hot spots to add to my itinerary.

-- Katherine Davoli (email), June 10, 2010

A Guatemala-based mapmaking company Where-To-Go-Maps is working towards creating a globalised mapping system that would see their free hand drawn artistic city maps available to travellers for all major tourist destinations worldwide.

The maps present tourists with the best hotels, restaurants, bars, shops, attractions and sightseeing highlights that each city has to offer, as well as illustrating the specic locations of local businesses who advertise on the maps.

An example below for Madrid (http://www.wheretogomaps.com/map_madrid.html)

Matt

-- Matt R (email), July 12, 2010

Here is a great collection of book end papers that are all in the form of maps - this one is from Portrait of a Village by Joan Hassall & Frances Brett Young. Heinemann London 1937. 21 x 30cms. (http://isoipse.tumblr.com/post/76898901/end-paper-maps)

"I take this opportunity of declaring that no village like it [Monk's Norton] has ever existed outside my imagination..." FBY

Matt

-- Matt R (email), July 14, 2010

The Map That Came to Life

Here is a childrens geography book by Ronald Lampitt published in the UK in the 1948. The book uses a mix of maps and scenes - segments of Ordance Survey type mapping in one-to-one correspondence with the 3D scene they represent.

The complete book is here (http://www.fulltable.com/VTS/aoi/l/lampitt/map.htm)

Matt

-- matt R (email), July 17, 2010

The cultural norm of the tube map strikes again!

Automotive industry by way of the London Underground map.

-- Andrea (email), August 13, 2010