Visual Geography Probes the Essence of Maps and Mapmaking

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JOUSfUI 91ft /O ?U9tUlJVd9(J 'S'fl 9if) ifq pajosuods uoyiqiyxa uy ca. 900 B.C. Babylonian world ca. 3000 B.C. Picture map map with a description in from a silver vase. Shows two oments in Mapping presents the history of cuneiform, on clay tablet. rivers flowing from a range of maps from etched lines on clay tablets and By permission of the British Library. mountains. Courtesy of Oxford University Press. Mancient Chinese grids to ephemeral images on computer screens. Selected episodes in cartographic history, spanning several centuries, show the transfor mation of mapmaking from primarily art to primarily science, as new technologies have enabled us to map our surroundings with ever greater accuracy and detail.

18th century Topographic map of Kiangsi Province in southeast China. By permission of the British Library.

Sixth century Isidore of Seville. 300-900 Dresden Codex, aps are, among other things, a way of making World map. Ninth-century a Classic Period Mayan geography visual. They are world views, ways version of the T-O map adopted manuscript. Its hieroglyphs and by Isidore in his Et\molo^ies. illustrations depict astrological of thinking, and ways of communicating. From John Noble Wilford, The predictions related to the helical M Mapmakers (1981). rising of Venus. They depict our world and guide us through it. Courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf. Courtesy of Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden. Visual Geography probes the essence of maps and mapmaking. It follows the story of cartography through the millennia, across the globe, and beyond the solar ' y system. It includes some of the world's most beautiful harting the Heavens begins with the idea that and enduring maps, some of its most historic a map in for thousands of years, we looked to the heav Columbus' hand, the map that was carried to the Moon, ens as a way to understand the Earth. We now the first map to show America and it examines the Cview the Earth from the heavens, plotting its size and urge to map, to measure our world, and to record it shape, and our place in the universe from remote graphically. satellite data beamed back to Earth.

ca. 900 "Cottonian" world map. Named after the collec tion in which it is contained, this map is one of a number of Anglo-Saxon world maps. »ermission of Ihe British Library.

ca. 1550 A sailor taking the 13th century Ibn Sa'id. World Christopher Columbus. 1193 The Suchow planisphere. altitude by observing a star map. Arabic world map, one of Sketch of the northwest coast of Chinese star chart. Prepared by with a cross-staff. three known versions of a >Hispaniola (Haiti). The only Huang Shang, and committed to By permission of the British Library European world map by Ibn known surviving chart drawn by stone by Wang Chih-Yuan in Sa'id. Columbus. From facsimile. 1247. Courtesy of the Bodlian Library, Oxford. Courtesy Geography and Map Di Courtesy of The Needham Research Library of Congress. Institute, Cambridge University. tt $ * \

1991 Digitized graphic of the eyond Geography reveals the myriad uses to Atlantic Ocean at Cape Hatteras. The Epilogue is a statement about the power of maps which maps are put from conquering enemies, The three windows show extreme in capturing the human imagination and a visual feast loV variations in surface temperature. to helping us predict the weather, to determining Courtesy of the Convex Computer of maps :from Leonardo's view of Imola, to Woman's Corporation and the Royal Netherlands the age, size, and history of the Earth. From simple I Meteorological Institute. map of Philadelphia. maps that could be spread out and read, we have now developed electronic maps that can answer a range of i previously imponderable questions. Old and new maps are displayed together according to topics of enduring human concern conflict, time, people and politics, oceans... n 14

1991 Satellite image map of ' 16th centurv Florida. Mosaic of 16 Landsat Plan of Imola. Possibly t images. city mapped to scale. Courtesy of ihe U.S. Geological Survey, Reproduced by gracious permission of Her Queen EH/abuth II. copyright reserved.

1991 Constantine Anderson 1988 Copper Basin, Arizona. | 1972 Map of Philadelphia. From Panel: 1972 Frank B. and others. New York City: Modeled surface of proposed Courtesy Richard Saul Wurman.f Moore, Geologic Map of the Midtown Manhattan (detail). strip mine. Howard Bruuncr. Upton Quadrangle. Central Courtesy of the Manhattan Map Co.. Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey Kentucky, New York, N.Y. and the U.S. Forest Service, Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.