CaGIS vol. 29, no. 3

The Exploratory Essays Initiative: Background and Overview

Mark Monmonier and David Woodward

This special issue of Cartography and Geographic Information Science (CaGIS) arises out of planning for Volume Six (Cartography in the Twentieth Century) of the History of Cartography, a multi-volume series that has performed a dual role as a reference work and interpretive narrative for the history of mapmaking in all periods and cultures. When the History of Cartography Project was conceived in 1977, the original plan was for four volumes to cover the subject to 1900, the traditional cutoff date for carto-bibliographers and map historians. This plan was sharply criticized by one of our editorial advisers, Walter W. Ristow, then chief of the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, who pointed out that the story would stop before the most prolific cartographic century. The history of twentieth-century cartography was added to the plans, and in December 1984, Brian Harley and David Woodward invited Mark Monmonier to be a co-editor for Volume 6. A detailed outline for the volume was drafted in 1985, but plans were put on hold as work on other volumes mushroomed. We eventually modified the outline for discussion at a three-day conference on issues and events in twentieth-century cartography held at the Library of Congress on October 9-11, 1997. The conference was attended by thirty-four scholars, practitioners, and institutional sponsors, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Historical Role of Photomechanical Techniques in Map Production

Karen Severud Cook

From the 1880s until the 1970s, photomechanical techniques played an important role in map making. Images created by and for photography were manipulated to form the printing image(s) from which the map was reproduced in multiple copies. After experiments in mapmaking in the 1860s, photomechanical techniques gained acceptance by the 1880s and, thereafter, increasingly dominated mapmaking until their rapid decline after the 1970s, as the shift to computers and electronic technology occurred. When they replaced earlier manual methods in the nineteenth century, photomechanical techniques caused the tools and materials of map production and the roles of personnel to change. Control over image production shifted from the printer to the cartographer as pen-and-ink drafting and associated collage techniques developed in the early 1900s, and even more so when scribing came into general use in the 1960s. Having thus assumed more direct responsibility for the end product (the printed map), the cartographer also adopted methods of predicting and controlling its appearance, such as standardized tools and materials, drafting specifications, flow charting, and color proofing. Through the faster and cheaper production of maps whose graphic presentation of information was enhanced by tonal effects and color printing, photomechanical production techniques also contributed to the growth of the map trade and of map use during the twentieth century.

KEYWORDS: Photomechanical map production; map design; map reproduction; production tools; production techniques; production materials; pen-and-ink drafting; photographic halftone screen; photographic tint screen; stick-up; negative scribing; technical pens; photolithography; photoengraving; collage techniques

The Impact on Topographic Mapping of Developments in Land and Air Survey: 1900-1939

Peter Collier

At the beginning of the twentieth century, little of the world outside of Europe, India, and parts of North America had been covered by topographic mapping. By the end of the century there were few areas that were not covered by topographic mapping, if only at small scales. Most of the technological changes that made this extension of map coverage possible were pioneered during the period 1900-1939. This paper reviews the technological developments in land and air survey that took place during that period and relates them to the drive to produce cost-effective mapping for civil and military purposes.

KEYWORDS: Topographic mapping; twentieth century; photogrammetry; land survey; technological developments

American Promotional Road Mapping in the Twentieth Century

James R. Akerman

This paper sketches the broad outlines of the practices of map publishers, industrial concerns, motor clubs, and state governments to convince Americans to become motoring tourists and, hence, to consume the goods, services, and landscapes these interests wished to promote. Their efforts were rooted in the promotional mapping of American railroads during the nineteenth century and in bicycle mapping. Yet, the particular demands of automobile travel, including long-distance navigation under the control of the travelers themselves, argues for an almost unique dependence on maps, which in turn gave road maps considerable value as promotional tools.

KEYWORDS: Automobile road maps, promotional cartography, map publishing, map marketing, map use, consumers

Towards the Automated Map Factory: Early Automation at the U.S. Geological Survey

Patrick H. McHaffie

This paper is concerned with changes in map work at the U.S. Geological Survey during the period from 1950 to 1974. At the start of this period, mapmaking at USGS was dominated by manual techniques organized to conform to twentieth-century advances in photogrammetry, drafting techniques, materials, and industrial organization. During the 1950s and 1960s, technologies that had been developed in other sectors of American science and industry were inserted into mapping processes with hopes of huge productivity gains and added efficiencies. The development paths of two in-house devices, Autoplot and Autoline, illustrate the ways in which cartographic automation became an agency policy as well as a powerful ideology.

KEYWORDS: Cartography, labor process, automation, United States Geological Survey, oral history

The Politics of the Map in the Early Twentieth Century

Michael Heffernan

Drawing on material from several countries, principally Britain, France, and the United States, this paper considers the politics of mapmaking in the years before, during, and immediately after World War I. Following a discussion of some noteworthy but hitherto overlooked mapping projects from the period around 1900, the paper examines the wartime production of maps as aids to geopolitical strategy in three Allied cities—London, Paris, and New York—with particular reference to the major geographical societies in these locations.

KEYWORDS: Geopolitical maps, international relations, early twentieth century, World War I

Allied Military Model Making during World War II

Alastair W. Pearson

It is generally accepted that the three-dimensional nature of the digital terrain model enhances our visualization of surfaces. Modern techniques enable a detailed landscape to be constructed as a facsimile of reality that provides an opportunity to move through or fly over the landscape. Given these benefits, it is little surprise that simulations using digital terrain models are employed as essential visual aids for briefing and training military personnel prior to land, air, and sea operations. Though these capabilities are significant, they are not necessarily, in the basic sense, new. This paper traces the development and examines the role of terrain models made by the Allies during World War II, a period prior to the development of computer-based modeling. Though made from basic materials, these sophisticated terrain models were hand crafted by enlisted sculptors, architects, stage designers, and artists, who carefully modeled a sculpture of the landscape to be an invaluable aid during key military operations of World War II.

KEYWORDS: Military mapping, terrain modeling, World War II

Maps for Ordinary Consumers versus Maps for the Military: Double Standards of Map Accuracy in Soviet Cartography, 1917-1991

Alexey V. Postnikov

Soviet cartography shared several important characteristics with the Russian cartography from which it emerged. Geographical expeditions were extremely important for filling out the contents of both Russian and Soviet state topographic maps. Cartography had been centralized in many ways in Russian times, but the centralization became absolute under the Soviet system. At the same time cartography came under centralized control of the government in the State Cartographic Service, and the publication and use of large-scale maps were subject to governmental restrictions. The 1:100,000 map of the USSR was compiled in 1954, and was not designed to provide ordinary consumers with topographic information. Any maps for ordinary users, their scales notwithstanding, were based on the 1:2,500,000 map of the country. In the 1970s, the map was deliberately impaired by a cartographic projection that resulted in random distortions of the map’s contents.

KEYWORDS: Cartography, topography, geography, geomorphology, surveys, security, accuracy, archives, Russia, USSR, air surveys, geodesy, geographical descriptions

American Cartographic Transformations during the Cold War

John Cloud

A great convergence of cartography, secrecy, and power occurred during the Cold War. In the American case, a complex series of interactions between secret and classified programs and institutions and their publicly accessible counterparts accomplished both traditional and novel objectives of military geographic intelligence. This process also yielded the World Geodetic System, a mass-centered “figure of the earth” at accuracies adequate for warfare with intercontinental ballistic missiles. A structural and institutional separation developed between enterprises charged with overhead data acquisition systems, which were classified at increasingly high levels of secrecy, and those responsible for data reduction, analysis, and mapping systems, which remained largely unclassified and publicly accessible, in part to conceal the classified data acquisition systems. This structural separation destabilized photogrammetric mapping by displacing systems that privileged dimensional stability with systems that privileged novel sensor types more appropriate to Cold War geo-political objectives and constraints. Eventually, photogrammetric mapping systems were re-stabilized by successfully implementing analytical solutions imposed in digital mapping and data management systems. This achievement re-privileged dimensional stability, now redefined to the new media of geo-referenced digital data. In the early 1970s these developments culminated in advanced research projects of Military Geographic Intelligence Systems (MGIS). Their deployment in the Vietnam War was both their apex and their undoing. In the aftermath, classified mapping and database systems diverged from civilian versions of MGIS, which became known as Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

KEYWORDS: Military geographic information; panoramic cameras; terrain analysis; World Geodetic System; analytical solutions; photogrammetry; Intelligence Community; Cold War; Vietnam War; Military-Industrial-Academic Complex; Talent-Keyhole; Corona; data acquisition; data reduction

Cognitive Map-Design Research in the Twentieth Century: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches

Daniel R. Montello

Cognitive map-design research has the goal of understanding human cognition in order to improve the design and use of maps. As a systematic sub-discipline of cartography, cognitive map-design research is a phenomenon of the twentieth century, specifically the latter half. Robinson’s The Look of Maps, published in 1952, played a seminal role in the genesis of cognitive map-design research in several countries, but it had interesting precursors. Empirical work that followed from The Look of Maps included psychophysical studies of graduated circles and studies of eye movements during map reading. Theoretical work that followed included a variety of cognitive theories but especially the development of the communication model as a comprehensive framework for scientific cartography. I chart the changing fortunes of cognitive map-design research after The Look of Maps and offer explanations for these changes. I also consider the legacy of cognitive map-design research—ways in which it has or has not mattered. I conclude with a list of questions suggested, but not decisively answered, by this exploratory essay.

KEYWORDS: History of cartography, cartographic research, map perception, map cognition, communication model, Arthur Robinson

A History of Twentieth-Century American Academic Cartography

Robert McMaster and Susanna McMaster

The academic discipline of cartography is a twentieth-century phenomenon. From its incipient roots in landscape representation in geology and the mapping of socio-economic data in geography, it grew into its own sub-discipline with graduate programs, research paradigms, and a scientific literature of its own. It came close to establishing a national center for cartography in the late 1960s. After rather sporadic activity before World War II, the period from 1946 to 1986 saw the building of major graduate programs at the universities of Wisconsin, Kansas, and Washington. Other programs were created, often with the doctoral students from those three. At the end of the twentieth century, cartography underwent significant changes in relation to the emerging discipline of geographic information science. The future for academic cartography is less certain, as graduate programs adjust the balances among the many components of mapping science, including cartography, geovisualization, GI science, GIS systems, spatial analysis/statistics, and remote sensing.

KEYWORDS: John Paul Goode, Erwin Raisz, Richard Edes Harrison, Arthur Robinson, George Jenks, John Sherman, Waldo Tobler, analytical cartography.