MAP-MAKERS FOLLOW THE MAP CHANCERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 21

MAP-MAKERS FOLLOW THE MAP CHANCERS

THE mills of geography today grind faster and more finely than ever before, writes Herbert B. Nichols, in the "Christian Science Monitor." Carto-

■ ' graphers find the political boundaries of nations' changing so swiftly they have difficulty in.keeping their .work Abreast of the times. Meanwhile, improvements in tools and methods allow technicians to produce maps with far greater detail than ever before, bo that he who travels on land, sea, or-in the air may know for certain that; the terrain beneath his feet is as represented on map or chart. In. all the world, there is very little land that must still be labelled "terra '.acognita "

Nevertheless, just now the world's principal map makers are hard at work changing their plates of Europe, so that school boards buying the textbooks for geography and - history classes will be able to have a revised map of Middle Europe.

• Nearly all maps of recent publica-

tion now show Mussolini's additions to his Italian East African Empire. Most have marked changes in South and Central America, but elsewhere, as in China, and Spain, events transpire so .swiftly as to render any map obsolete almost before it is drawn.

Map making is one of the oldest of the arts and sciences. Its history stretches back beyond the dimly-re-corded pages to early efforts on clay tablets in Babylonia, papyrus in Egypt, and stone in China. The early Mayans made small area sketches, likewise the Polynesians. In fact, the history of maps shows they were almost a universal achievement. Many were more artistic than scientifically accurate, and many were neither accurate nor artistic.

During the middle ages, when the theory of the sphericity of the earth was declared unscriptural, there were few world maps of any practical value. Then, during the period before and after Columbus discovered America, cartography took a decided jump ahead under such famous men as Gerhard Mercator, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sebastian Cabot. Then came Germans, Italians,. and Dutch, all founding schools which played active parts in laying down the cartographic;, fundamentals followed today. Probably it was the French, however, who really accomplished the most at this period, for up to the eighteenth century French explorers were active all over the globe, principally in the New World. Delisle and dAnville are two names which stand for such, among map makers.

Today, many of the historic maps extant are spread throughout the world in museums, libraries, and art collections. One of the finest collections is in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., under the care of Chief of the Division of Maps, Colonel Lawrence Martin.

For our starting point in tracking down the story of how modern maps are made, we might visit the Cartographic Research Library of one of the largest publishers of maps in the United States, Rand McNally and Company, Chicago. Their files consist not only of thousands of maps an<^ other publications, but documents and copies of documents'official and otherwise, relating to decisions, and treaties resulting in political changes. Rand McNally, like many other large map-making concerns, has a representative in Washington who is in constant contact with the various embassies whose countries may be involved in frontier disputes. The cartographer must begin work as soon is official data is available.

Many times, only a portion of a map is corrected. This portion, or "patch" as it is called, is made by the wax engraving process and when completed the foundryman saws out a section of the original map plate and inserts the corrective "patch."

. Today, map making is practically all mechanical. Once the necessary research among existing maps, records, government reports and notes on explorations is completed, the rest is done by machine.

It is - not even necessary for cartographers to be good at lettering any more. The larger concerns all use photographic lettering. Carefully drawn or printed alphabets are set up for labels, and the different combinations are photographed, cut out, and pasted on a master map. Each new place name thus becomes a new patch on an old map. For physical maps, pen

strokes by the thousands portray mountain ranges and peaks.

When new maps are being made, the photographic negative is compounded from as many as sixteen quarter sheets all attached to an easel board. Oriented in the proper placf on the easel, this composition make? a total of four layers with "windows" or holes in the three upper layers, through which the map composers can assure hair-split-, ting alignment of *eatures such as highways, rivers, mountains, etc. The board is -then photographed and after each exposure one layer of quarter sheets is removed.

When the composite negative is developed, the next process (for making black and white maps) involves making a print on a sensitised metal sheet. Then a special black grease is smeared on, which sticks to the lines and areas fixed by th>_ exposure and wipes off from the other places. After careful checking and retouching by skilled, artisans the plate goes into the press, where greasy ink and wipe are alternately applied. Only the greasy spots pick up the ink, passing it to the transfer cylinder, then to paper; and the map is finished. There are variations to the process, depending on what the publishers wish to accomplish, but, in general, that is the routine.

It. takes a great many maps of all kinds to accomplish every task set for them. Three types are featured in nearly all geography books for grammar school children, political, physical, and industrial. Other maps show the distribution of population, religion, races, natural resources, roads, railway lines, industries, colonies, education, shipping routes, so many: inter-

ests, in fact, that there is hardly a major problem in the world that cannot be illustrated by a map.

Under the present United States Administration, there has been greater activity in map-making than ever before. It seems that whenever a new project comes up for discussion in the nation's capital, a map turns up from somewhere. The Resettlement Administration, the W.P.A., and the T.V.A., are but three divisions of the Government more responsible than most for making Government map-makers work overtime. Some surprising things were discovered, for example, when information available to the Resettlement Administration was transferred to maps. A new land-use programme was inaugurated for California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, when it became apparent to a south-west conference, supplied with maps showing fertility of land and amount of water, that the fertile soil available was less than had been believed.

Industrial maps inaugurated by the French have given rise to "industrialography," which shows by means of maps the position of factories and trade groupings in relation to streets "and towns. So valuable are maps already completed of the suburbs of Paris that a move to map the whole of France in this way is under consideration.

Mapping also gained several thousand acres of land for the French Colonial Empire recently. An aerial survey proved that the maps of Martinique, the little French isle in the West Indies, sometimes called "The Pearl of the Antilles," needed revising. When the surveys were completed, Mar-

tinique was larger by some 30,000 acres than shown on existing charts.

Changing our scene to Ontario, airmapping revealecl some 3000 lakes missing from all charts. With increased mining, activities in Ontario and the necessity for remaking maps that were hazy, the Topographical Survey of Canada rounded out aerial surveys that have been under consideration in the northland ever since the World War. Mapping by means of aerial photography has developed into a whole new field of science which is very much faster than previously-followed land methods, and much closer to exactness. Map making has developed so swiftly in recent years that it is hard to say just when the improvements will reach their maturity.

NEW TYPE OF ANTIAIRCRAFT GUN In this drab, semi-rural place, not far frpm London but well away from any j main road, a half-battery of the new 4.5 in anti-aircraft guns has been established, and" today the guns were manned by their Territorial Army j crews for an inspection by War Office representatives and other visitors, stated a special correspondent's message from "Somewhere in Kent" to "The Times" on March 2. Lord Munster, Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for War, was to have been one of the visitors, but was] prevented from coming by an attack of influenza. In his place was Lieutenant-General J. H. MarshallCornwall, Deputy Chief of the Imperial' General Staff (Coast Defence and Anti-Aircraft), who was accompanied by Major-General Sir Frederick Pile, Commander of the Ist AntiAircraft Division, T.A., and Mr. S. A. Maxwell, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War. The half-battery comprises four guns and certain directing instruments; and one of the latter, the height-and-rangefinder, which in form is 'mainly a thick cylinder 16ft. long, appears! from a distance more prominently than I one of the guns. Each separate weapon J and instrument is set within its own j protective concrete enclosure, but there seems to be no special regularity in the layout, and one can imagine that in its rough surroundings, amid flat and open fields intersected by, dykes, the position would not be easy to spot from the air. OVER 16 TONS. Intended for use in a fixed position, the 4.5 in gun has a /heavy armoured shield to protect its mechanism and those who serve ■ it, and- on its turn-1 table base it weighs over 16 tons; yet it can be lifted and mounted on to axles ready for moving in less than half an hour, and for action it swings as handily as a dentist's chair. The gun j can fire an effective shell weighing 551b to a height of 26,000 ft, or nearly five miles, an altitude at which, Lieutenant-General Marshall-Cornwall pointed out, a raiding pilot would have to use oxygen and would be hampered in his bombing aim under anything less than first-rate visibility. The four guns are grouped irregularly round the. height-and-rangefinder and a predictor, the latter an ingenious instrument which, from data supplied electrically by the former, works out the course and speed of approaching aircraft, and in turn electrically instructs the gunlayer. He, on his seat close under the shield, simply watches the movements of a needle on a dial, and cannot even see what is going on outside. A trained crew could fire eight to 10 rounds a minute. The range and trajectory of the 4.5 in gun are almost the same as those of the 3.7 in. but the weight of the shell is much more—sslb against 281b —and its radius of destruction after bursting is correspondingly greater.

According to Lieutenant-General Mar-shall-Cornwall, the teething troubles of the production of the 4.5 in weapon, a more complicated matter than that of the 3.7 in, are now over, and the guns are coming along in satisfactory numbers. Certainly the sight of this halfbattery, with the assurance that more and more of such guns will steadily be established round London and up and down our coasts, is heartening'