The map library

I’m not sure it’s accurate, but a lot of our maps aren’t really accurate.
I like the idea of thinking more about Earth as a place of vast oceans. It seems like the idea was to prompt people to be less human-centric. Understand how important the oceans are. Or maybe that wasn’t the idea only what that image of mostly-ocean made me think

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The globe app you linked shows Earth in orthographic projection, which means that exactly half of the globe is visible at any rotation. You can’t quite get orthographic perspective in the real world - it would require an infinitely strong telescope positioned at a point of view an infinite distance away from the subject. And milliefink’s image appears to show a 3D render where the camera was positioned some plausible distance away in Earth’s orbit, which means that actually less than half of Earth’s surface is visible.

It’s the same effect that can be seen in portraits taken with a wide lens from close up vs with a zoom lens from farther away. Think of continents as the ears that become more visible as the camera moves away:

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This is going to haunt me in my dreams.

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So that’s why my head looks fat in photographs! And here was me thinking it was cos I need to eat less and do more exercise! Well, you’ve saved me from a lot of extraneous work, so thanks for that :grin:

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Wow. That’s rich.

When interpreting any fire insurance map, researchers should take care to consult the legend for that particular edition to ensure the correct interpretation of line symbology.

Amen to that, bretheren (of course, including bretheren women) of the mapping persuasion!

via:

Fire insurance maps are distinctive because of the sophisticated set of symbols that allows complex information to be conveyed clearly.

we see that brick and tile are represented with a reddish/pink color

The use of yellow indicates frame, or wood, structures.

Other colors employed by Sanborn mapmakers included an olive green to demark fire resistive construction and gray for adobe construction material. Blue denotes concrete and cinder block construction. Gray is also used to indicate metal or iron building materials.

Much information could be conveyed through line types. A solid line indicated a solid wall. A break in a line showed doorways and other passages. Additionally, dashed lines could indicate some aspect of wall construction or the presence of a mansard roof. Extending solid lines beyond the edge of a building was a technique for indicating how high above the roof fire walls were built.

Will there be anyone who tries to train an AI to interpret all those publicly available maps, gobble up any other available info about the buildings and make 3D models of them?

Well, maybe not yet.

star trek android GIF

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1807 plan of (now Downtown) Detroit, after The Great Fire of 1805.


Created by the local celebrity and pentagramatically-minded freemason Augustus Woodward.

ETA: It can easily be seen why so many people have gotten lost downtown over the years! Seemingly random one way streets abound, which always helps.

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Some great maps of Jamaica live on my hard drive.

I think these first two came from a Texas university w/an astonishing map collection.


1882


1901

This is a great interactive vintage road map. Excellent topo maps result when certain areas are clicked. Very cool. It’s from a great site with other nice maps.


Falmouth is a weird old (1769) town on the N coast. When we were frequently visiting the island in the 90s, it was a sleepy, not terribly clean place. We were never inspired to stop there when we came to it.
It is now a busy AF port for sigh cruise ships.

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Is it the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at UT Austin? That is a fantastic collection, justifiably famous.

…sounds like a Lovecraft setting. The Horror Out of Falmouth, that kind of thing. Maybe more of a Tim Powers thing nowadays.

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Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
Yes, that is indeed the joint :smiley:

Truer woids was rarely spoke!

LOL Nice one!

Mom horrified some locals waiting at a bus stop in Falmouth. She was sposed to stay on the road we were on, but inexplicably took a weird left. The folks at the bus stop yelled and waved, warning her it was one way the WRONG way.

We were traveling at what was too great a speed for the narrow, pretty much alley we found ourselves in. Still, she never slowed down, and had no idea why when I asked later. We passed a taxi, whose driver’s eyes were the size of saucers as he honked and honked and wildly gesticulated - this dumbass tourist going the wrong way and too fast!

Then there was the truck. Not a pickup, a great hulking brute of a lorry was coming at us, and somehow mom timed it so we got around him - also wide-eyed, honking & gesticulating!

We suddenly shot out of the alley and back onto the main road, right by the bus stop. The people there laughed and laughed and cheered and clapped and waved, and we laughed and waved back.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, thank fuck.

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I don’t think adding interstate highways helped. At all. :rage:

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A lot places are called island around here.


around 1910

around 1930

Nowish.
Jätkäsaari (dude island)
Hernesaari (pea island)
Munkkisaari (Monk island)

Old maps of Helsinki:

Map of Finland:
https://asiointi.maanmittauslaitos.fi/karttapaikka/

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IMG_7579

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The Finnish population just doubled.

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Perhaps the cartographer just felt like annexing St. Petersburg and Lake Ladoga. I mean, who hasn’t?

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Only bits of him.

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I would have expected at least one in the Caribbean and more around the UK and Ireland? :thinking:

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The top end of the auction, which set new records, offers some proof of that. The highest-selling item was a 1879 map by Charles William Pressler and A. B. Langermann, which is regarded as the first truly accurate map of the state. Only two other copies of the map are known to exist, both of which are held by institutions; one is at the U.S. Geological Survey in Virginia, while the other is in the Jesse Wallace Williams Map Collection at Abilene’s Hardin-Simmons University. Lusher’s copy sold for $705,000, a new record for a map of Texas.

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