Maps to Meet Your Needs
BY AWAKE! CORRESPONDENT IN BRITAIN
FINDING your way around a strange country or city is a challenge. First, you have to get your bearings. Then, decide which is the best route. How can you find out? What you need is a map!
Maps—Since When, and Why?
Mapmaking, or cartography as it is called, has a long and checkered history. Some authorities trace the making of maps back 4,300 years to those engraved on clay tablets in Babylonia. But it was the early Greeks who drew the charts that were the forerunners of modern maps. After the maps of the ancient world drawn by Claudius Ptolemy in the second century C.E., cartography sank into the Dark Ages. Unexplored areas showed up as the domain of monsters and giants. Religion so influenced maps that many depicted a world dominated by the garden of Eden. Jerusalem and the Middle East began to appear at the top of maps of the then-known world.
Early maps of Britain also reflected an ecclesiastical influence. One such map traced the course that pilgrims followed to the religious shrines of England. Detailing the “Pilgrim’s Great North Road,” this map set out a route from the northern town of Durham to the southern coastal port of Dover.
The father of modern cartography was Gerardus Mercator (1512-94). He designed a method of map projection famed among navigators for its accuracy, and many maps drawn according to the Mercator projection appear in modern atlases.
To landowners, maps became a boon. Reference to their clearly drawn boundary lines helped settle legal disputes. Government interest in maps grew, as tax assessment depended on accurate recording of land tenure.
Nowadays, maps fill everyday needs. Atlases help schoolchildren to grasp the elements of geography. Charts enable forecasters to display graphically what we may expect in the way of weather conditions. A map can help us to make the best use of public transportation. And for a family outing, a map can show the most scenic route to take.
Specialists are not neglected. There are population-density maps for town planners. Maps of the seabed help those who watch for wrecked ships or search for mineral resources. Archaeological maps are an aid to those digging up the past. Why, for space researchers there are even maps of the moon and of some planets! With such a wealth of information available on maps, it is to your advantage to develop and improve your skill in reading them.
How to Read a Map
Getting the most from your maps is akin to learning a foreign language. When you study another language, you are faced with a new vocabulary and a different grammar. In map language, symbols might be likened to words, whereas scale contours and grids function as the grammar. Most maps are drawn with a box containing the key to the symbols used on the map. This serves as a dictionary, defining the signs.
Symbols are carefully chosen to convey their meaning. To locate a lighthouse, for example, look for a symbol that resembles one. Churches and mosques may be designated by black squares or circles surmounted by crosses or crescents.
How can you become familiar with the meanings of such symbols? John Wilson, author of Follow the Map, recommends “the pleasant pastime of ‘map browsing.’” He adds: “Let your eye wander idly over the map, and translate the symbols as you meet them.”
Do you find that your area looks quite different from what your map shows? Why is this? Well, normally we view our surroundings from our own height, five to six feet [1.5-1.8 m] above the ground. But maps show the land from a perspective, vertically far above each point. To grasp this notion, it is vital that you understand map grammar.
Scale, Height, and Position
The mapmaker’s challenge is to record variations of altitude above sea level and any man-made features on the ground. All of this must be printed on a sheet of manageable size. To achieve this, maps are drawn to scale. One popular British map series shows the country at a scale of 1:50,000—which means that each inch on the map represents 50,000 inches of the earth’s surface.
How, though, can a flat map show variations of altitude? Oblique hill-shading is one way of adding the third dimension. The sun appears to shine from a position over the map’s top left-hand corner. Slopes facing east and southeast, being in the shade, are then drawn in darker colors. Modern maps frequently have contour lines joining points of equal height above the mean sea level. Printing these marks in subdued colors avoids detracting from the map’s other features.
Many maps use a system of intersecting lines to help you clearly define your position. This grid, as it is called, allows any location to be given as a set of alphabetical or numerical coordinates that fix the spot within the grid of lines. For example, a town might be located at G-13, that is G on the vertical side and number 13 on the horizontal. Where these two points meet is where you will find the town. However, how can you be sure that your map will give you an accurate picture?
Maps in the Computer Age
Military needs have often resulted in the publication of very accurate maps. During the last 40 years, precision plotting using stereoscopic comparison of aerial photographs has become a reality, with many countries following similar schemes.
Already, there are computerized moving map displays in some automobiles as well as detailed travel maps for home computers. “Micro Chips Take the Wheel,” read a headline in The Observer. The report explained one experimental project that uses computer discs with map information linked to speech synthesizers. The driver just keys in the computer screen map to indicate his destination. No need to worry about those puzzling road junctions! Why? Because as the car approaches each intersection, a voice tells the driver the direction to take. Compass and wheel sensors keep track of the car’s course. Recent developments are even more reliable and simpler.
What will this mean for the future of maps? Will paper maps become collectors’ items? Time will tell. In either case, the map will continue as a versatile instrument to meet your travel needs.
[Map/Pictures on page 23]
Many maps include a key, or legend, to define the symbols used
Variations in elevation are shown by contour lines, usually in subdued colors
A grid system allows a location to be plotted on the map
Map usually shows what one inch or one centimeter equals on the earth’s surface (not shown here)
A scale of miles or kilometers allows you to measure distances between places
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[Picture Credit Line on page 22]
From the book Die Heiligkeit der Gesellschaft Jesu