Geographical Map Report By Dr. Frank J. Collazo

Geographical Map Report

By Dr. Frank J. Collazo

August 25, 2010

Abstract

The report is comprised of three sections:  Section I describes the history of maps tracing map generation to the 2300 BC.  Section II is the Chronology of map generation to include the latest technology of the 20^th century.  Section III describes the biography of famous cartographers highlighting Mercator who was the architect of map generation.  This investigation was triggered in response to the Dominican Republic Map Institute Requirement that Colsa Corporation is planning to bid.  In order to have an understanding of these requirements, I need to know more about map making.  None of the data presented in the report has been created; it has been organized in chronological order to have a grasp of the history of map making. 

Introduction

Maps are a representation of a geographic area, usually a portion of the earth's surface, drawn or printed on a flat surface.  In most instances a map is a diagrammatic rather than a pictorial representation of the terrain; it usually contains a number of generally accepted symbols, which indicate the various natural, artificial, or cultural, features of the area it covers.

History of Map Making

The earliest existing maps were made by the Babylonians about 2300 bc. More extensive regional maps, drawn on silk and dating from the 2nd century bc, have been found in China. One of the most interesting types of a primitive map is the cane chart constructed by the Marshall Islanders in the South Pacific Ocean.  This chart is made of a grid work of cane fibers arranged to show the location of islands. The art of mapmaking was advanced in both the Maya and Inca civilizations and the Inca as early as the 12th century ad made maps of the lands they conquered.

The first map to represent the known world is believed to have been made in the 6th century bc by the Greek philosopher Anaximander.  One of the most famous maps of classical times was drawn by the Greek geographer Eratosthenes about 200 bc.

About ad 150 the Alexandrian scholar Ptolemy published his geography containing maps of the world.  Following the fall of the Roman Empire, European mapmaking all but ceased; such maps as were made were usually drawn by monks who often portrayed the earth inaccurately.  The Arabian geographer al-Idrisi made a map of the world in 1154. Beginning approximately in the 13th century, Mediterranean navigators prepared accurate charts of that sea, usually without meridians or parallels but provided with lines to show the bearings between important ports.

In the 15th century, editions of Ptolemy's maps were printed in Europe; for the next several hundred years these maps exerted great influence on European cartographers. A map produced in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller, a German cartographer, probably was the first to apply the name America to the newly discovered transatlantic lands.  The map, printed in 12 separate sheets, was also the first to clearly separate North and South America from Asia. In 1570 Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish mapmaker published the first modern atlas, Orbis Terrarum.  It contained 70 maps. During the 16th century many other cartographers produced maps that incorporated the ever-increasing information brought back by navigators and explorers.

It is Gerardus Mercator, however, who stands as the greatest cartographer of the age of discovery; the projection he devised for his world map proved invaluable to all future navigators. The accuracy of later maps was greatly increased by more precise determinations of latitude and longitude and of the size and shape of the earth. The first maps to show compass variation were produced in the first half of the 17th century, and the first charts to show ocean currents were made about 1665. By the 18th century, the scientific principles of mapmaking were well established, and the most notable inaccuracies in maps involved unexplored parts of the world. By the late 18th century, as the initial force of world exploration subsided and as nationalism began to develop as a potent force, a number of European countries began to undertake detailed national topographic surveys.

The complete topographic survey of France was issued in 1793; roughly square, it measured about 11 m (about 36 ft) on each side.  Britain, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, and other countries followed suit.

In the United States the Geological Survey was organized in 1879 for the purpose of making large-scale topographic maps of the entire country. In 1891 the International Geographical Congress proposed the mapping of the entire world on a scale of 1:1,000,000, a task that still remains to be completed.

During the 20th century, mapmaking underwent a series of major technical innovations. Aerial photography was developed during World War I and used extensively during World War II in the making of maps. Beginning in 1966 with the launching of the satellite Pageos, and continuing in the 1970s with the three Landsat satellites, the U.S. has been engaged in a complete geodetic survey of the surface of the earth by means of high-resolution photographic equipment.  In spite of the great advancements in cartographic technique and knowledge, substantial portions of the earth's surface have not been surveyed in detail.  Surveying work continues, for instance, on the continent of Antarctica.

Types of Maps

Maps may be used for a variety of purposes, and as a result a number of specialized types of maps have been developed.

Topographic Maps

The basic type of map used to represent land areas is the topographic map.  Such maps show the natural features of the area covered as well as certain artificial features, known as cultural features.  Political boundaries, such as the limits of towns, countries, and states, are also shown. Because of the great variety of information included on them, topographic maps are most often used as general reference maps.

Special-Purpose, or Thematic, Maps

Among the most important of the special-purpose maps are hydrographic and aviation charts. Hydrographic charts are used for the navigation of ships and cover the surface of the oceans and other large bodies of water and their shores.  Over the water portion of a chart, depths are shown at frequent intervals by printing the number of fathoms of water at low tide.  Shoal areas are circled or shaded to give them greater visibility, and the limits of channels are shown by lines. The type of bottom, such as sand, mud, or rock, is also indicated. An important feature of such charts is the exact location of lighthouses, buoys, and other aids to navigation.  The only other shore features shown on a chart are such landmarks as tall buildings or prominent peaks on which a navigator may wish to take a bearing.  Aviation charts for use over land somewhat resemble topographic maps but bear in addition the location of radio beacons, airways, and the areas covered by the beams of radio range stations.

Other special-purpose maps include political maps, which show only towns and political divisions without topographic features; geologic maps, showing the geologic structure of an area; and maps indicating the geographic distribution of crops, land use, rainfall, population, and hundreds of other kinds of social and scientific data.  Another useful type of map is the relief map, which is a three-dimensional model of the terrain of an area.  Such maps are usually carved out of clay or plaster of Paris.  To emphasize relief, the vertical scale of relief maps is usually several times the horizontal scale.  Such maps can also be manufactured by stamping plastic sheets in a mold.  Relief maps are extensively used in military and engineering planning.

Basic Elements of a Map

For a map to contain a large amount of easily read information, a system of symbols must be employed.  Many commonly used symbols have become generally accepted or are readily understood.  Thus cities and towns are indicated by dots or patches of shading; streams and bodies of water are often printed in blue; and political boundaries are shown by colored ribbons or dotted lines.  A cartographer, as mapmakers are called, may, however, devise a great variety of symbols to suit various needs.  For example, a dot may be used to symbolize the presence of 10,000 head of cattle, or crossed pickaxes may be used to denote the location of a mine.  The symbols used on a map are defined in the map's key, or legend.

Geographic Grid

In order to locate a feature on a map or to describe the extent of an area, it is necessary to refer to the map's geographic grid.  This grid is made up of meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude.  By agreed convention, longitude is marked 180° east and 180° west from 0° at Greenwich, England.  Latitude is marked 90° north and 90° south from the 0° parallel of the equator.  Points on a map can be accurately defined by giving degrees, minutes, and seconds for both latitude and longitude (see Latitude and Longitude).  Maps are usually arranged so that true north is at the top of the sheet, and are provided with a compass rose or some other indication of magnetic variation (see Magnetic Pole).

Scale

The scale to which a map is drawn represents the ratio of the distance between two points on the earth and the distance between the two corresponding points on the map.  The scale is commonly represented in figures, as 1:100,000, which means that one unit measured on the map (say 1 cm) represents 100,000 of the same units on the earth's surface.  A map to this scale is also sometimes called a centimeter-to-the-kilometer map.  On most maps the scale is indicated in the margin, and frequently a divided line showing the scale length of such units as 1, 5, and 10 km or mi, or both, on the original area is provided.  The scales used in maps vary widely.  Ordinary topographic maps, such as those of the U.S. issued by the U.S. Geological Survey, are usually made to a scale of 1:62,500 (about 1 in to the mile).  For military purposes scales as large as 1:15,800 are used. Since the early years of the 20th century, a number of governments have been collaborating on a standard map of the world at a scale of 1:1,000,000.

Relief

The varying heights of hills and mountains, and the depths of valleys and gorges as they appear on a topographic map, are known as relief; unless the relief is adequately represented, the map does not give a clear picture of the area it represents.  In the earliest maps, relief was often indicated pictorially by small drawings of mountains and valleys, but this method is extremely inaccurate and has been generally supplanted by a system of contour lines.  The contour lines represent points in the mapped area that are at equal elevations.  The contour interval selected may be any unit, depending on the amount of relief and the scale of the map, such as 50 m, and in drawing the map the cartographer joins together all points that are at a height of 50 m above sea level, all points at a height of 100 m, all points at a height of 150 m, and so on.  The shapes of the contour lines provide an accurate representation of the shapes of hills and depressions, and the lines themselves show the actual elevations. Closely spaced contour lines indicate steep slopes.

Other methods of indicating elevation include the use of colors or tints, and of hachure’s (short parallel lines) or shadings.  When colors are used for this purpose, a graded series of tones is selected to color areas of similar elevations; for example, all the land between 0 and 100 m above sea level may be colored a light shade of green, all land between 100 and 200 m a darker shade, and so on.  Hachures are used to show slopes; they are made heavier and closer together for steeper slopes.  Often only southeast slopes are hachured or shaded, giving somewhat the effect of a bird's-eye view of the area illuminated by light from the northwest.  Shadings or carefully drawn hachure’s, neither of which give elevations, are more easily interpreted than contour lines and are sometimes used in conjunction with them for greater clarity.

Map Projections

For the representation of the entire surface of the earth without any kind of distortion, a map must have a spherical surface; a map of this kind is known as a globe.  A flat map cannot accurately represent the rounded surface of the earth except for very small areas where the curvature is negligible.  To show large portions of the earth's surface or to show areas of medium size with accuracy, the map must be drawn in such a way as to compromise among distortions of areas, distances, and direction.  In some cases the cartographer may wish to achieve accuracy in one of these qualities at the expense of distortion in the others.  The various methods of preparing a flat map of the earth's surface are known as projections and are classified as geometric or analytic, depending on the technique of development.  Geometric projections are classified according to the type of surface on which the map is assumed to be developed, such as cylinders, cones, or planes; plane projections are also known as azimuthally or zenithal projections.  Analytical projections are developed by mathematical computation.

Cylindrical Projections

In making a cylindrical projection, the cartographer regards the surface of the map as a cylinder that encircles the globe, touching it at the equator.  The parallels of latitude are extended outward from the globe, parallel to the equator, as parallel planes intersecting the cylinder.  Because of the curvature of the globe, the parallels of latitude nearest the poles when projected onto the cylinder are spaced progressively closer together, and the projected meridians of longitude are represented as parallel straight lines, perpendicular to the equator and continuing to the North and South poles.  After the projection is completed, the cylinder is assumed to be slit vertically and rolled out flat.  The resulting map represents the world's surface as a rectangle with equally spaced parallel lines of longitude and unequally spaced parallel lines of latitude.  Although the shapes of areas on the cylindrical projection are increasingly distorted toward the poles, the size relationship of areas on the map is equivalent to the size relationship of areas on the globe.

The familiar Mercator projection, developed mathematically by the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator, is related to the cylindrical projection, with certain modifications.  A Mercator map is accurate in the equatorial regions but greatly distorts areas in the high latitudes.  Directions, however, are represented faithfully, and this is especially valuable in navigation.  Any line cutting two or more meridians at the same angle is represented on a Mercator map as a straight line.  Such a line, called a rhumb line, represents the path of a ship or an airplane following a steady compass course.  Using a Mercator map, a navigator can plot a course simply by drawing a line between two points and reading the compass direction from the map.

Azimuthally Projection

This group of map projections is derived by projecting the globe onto a plane that may be tangent to it at any point.  The group includes the gnomonic, orthographic, and stereographic plane projections.  Two other types of plane projections are known as the azimuthally equal area and the azimuthally equidistant; they cannot be projected but are developed on a tangent plane.  The gnomonic projection is assumed to be formed by rays projected from the center of the earth.  In the orthographic projection the source of projecting rays is at infinity, and the resulting map resembles the earth as it would appear if photographed from outer space.  The source of projecting rays for the stereographic projection is a point diametrically opposite the tangent point of the plane on which the projection is made.

The nature of the projection varies with the source of the projecting rays.  Thus the gnomonic projection covers areas of less than a hemisphere, the orthographic covers hemispheres, the azimuthally equal area and the stereographic projections map larger areas, and the azimuthally equidistant includes the entire globe.  In all these types of projection, however (except in the case of the azimuthally equidistant), the portion of the earth that appears on the map depends on the point at which the imaginary plane touches the earth.  A plane-projection map with the plane tangent to the surface of the earth at the equator would represent the equatorial region but would not show the entire region in one map; with the plane tangent at either of the poles, the map would represent the Polar Regions.

Because the source of the gnomonic projection is at the center of the earth, all great circles, that is, the equator, all meridians, and any other circles that divide the globe into two equal parts, are represented as straight lines.  A great circle that connects any two points on the earth is always the shortest distance between the two points. The gnomonic map is therefore a great aid to navigation when used in conjunction with the Mercator.

Conic Projections

In preparing a conic projection a cone is assumed to be placed over the top of the globe.  After projection, the cone is assumed to be slit and rolled out to a flat surface.  The cone touches the globe at all points on a single parallel of latitude, and the resulting map is extremely accurate for all areas near that parallel, but becomes increasingly distorted for all other areas in direct proportion to the distance of the areas from the standard parallel.

To provide greater accuracy, the Lambert conformal conic projection assumes a cone that passes through a part of the surface of the globe, intersecting two parallels.  Because the resulting map is accurate in the immediate vicinity of both parallels, the area represented between the two standard parallels is less distorted than the same area reproduced by a single conic projection.

The poly-conic projection is a considerably more complicated projection in which a series of cones is assumed, each cone touching the globe at a different parallel, and only the area in the immediate vicinity of each parallel is used.  By compiling the results of the series of limited conic projections, a large area may be mapped with considerable accuracy.  Because a cone cannot be made to touch the globe in the extreme polar and equatorial regions, the various conic projections are used to map comparatively small areas in the temperate zones.  Poly-conic maps offer a good compromise in the representation of area, distance, and direction over small areas.

Mathematical Computation

For accurate delineation of large areas on a small scale, a number of so-called projections have been developed mathematically.  Maps based on mathematical computation represent the entire earth in circles, ovals, or other shapes.  For special purposes the earth often is drawn not within the original form of the projection but within irregular, joined parts.  Maps of this type, called interrupted projections, include Goode's interrupted homolosine and Eckert's equal-area projection.

Map Making

Mapmaking, or cartography, has been greatly assisted by technological advancements since World War II.  Perhaps most important has been the use of remote sensing techniques, that is, techniques that gather data about an object without actually touching it.  Examples include aerial photography (including infrared photography) and satellite photography.  Satellite triangulation has substantially reduced the margin of error in determining the exact location of points on the earth's surface.  Among the more recent innovations has been the use of the computer to draw maps.

Observation

The basis of a modern map is a careful survey giving geographical locations and relations of a large number of points in the area being mapped.  Today, nearly all original maps make use of aerial photographs in addition to traditional land-surveying information.  Satellite photographs can furnish a wealth of accurate information about various features on the earth's surface, including the location of mineral deposits, the extent of urban sprawl, vegetation infestations, and soil types.

Compilation and Reproduction

Once the data have been collected, the map must be carefully planned with regard to its final use so that all relevant information can be rendered clearly and accurately.  The collected surveys and photographs are then used to enter a large number of points on a grid of crossed lines corresponding to the projection chosen for the map.  Elevations are determined and contour lines, if used, are drawn directly from stereoscopic pairs of photographs by using very complex instruments such as the multiplex.  The courses of roads and rivers and the positions of other features are drawn in the same way.  Final preparation of a map for printing begins by making a series of sheets, one for each color used on the map.  These sheets are made of an opaque coated plastic; lines and symbols are scribed onto the surface by a sharp etching tool that removes the opaque coating.  Each such sheet is a negative from which a lithographic plate is made.

Another type of map is an ortho-photomap, in which actual photographs from the body of the map.  Such a map is a mosaic of carefully pieced portions of aerial photographs, which have been changed by the use of an ortho-photo scope to eliminate scale and angle distortion.  During the 1970s advancements were made in computer-generated maps.  Data can be stored on the coordinates of a geographic area and on the distribution of statistical phenomena in the area.  A device such as a continuous-curve plotter enables a computer to draw accurate maps from the stored data.  Computer-generated maps can also be displayed on a video screen, where an operator can easily make alterations in the content.  Because such maps, and each incorporated change, can be stored in the computer, they are useful in furnishing an animated picture of a change over a period of time.  Contributed By:  Van H. English

American Exploration

The Spanish investigated further.  Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci sailed to the northern coast of South America in 1499 and pronounced the land a new continent.  European mapmakers named it America in his honor.  Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and in 1513 became the first of the European explorers of America to see the Pacific Ocean.  That same year another Spaniard, Juan Ponce de León, explored the Bahamas and Florida in search of the fountain of youth.

The first European voyages to the northern coast of America were old and forgotten:  The Norsemen (Scandinavian Vikings) sailed from Greenland and stayed in Newfoundland for a time around 1000.  Some scholars argue that European fishermen had discovered the fishing waters off eastern Canada by 1480.  But the first recorded voyage was made by John Cabot, an Italian navigator in the service of England, who sailed from England to Newfoundland in 1497. Giovanni da Verrazano, in 1524, and Jacques Cartier, in 1534, explored nearly the whole Atlantic coast of the present United States for France.  By that time, Europeans had scouted the American coast from Newfoundland to Brazil.  While they continued to look for shortcuts to Asia, Europeans began to think of America for its own sake.  Spain again led the way:  Hernán Cortés invaded Mexico in 1519, and Francisco Pizarro did the same in Peru in 1532.

Physical Geography

Physical geography includes the following fields: geomorphology, which uses geology to study the form and structure of the surface of the earth; climatology, which involves meteorology and is concerned with climatic conditions; biogeography, which uses biology and deals with the distribution of plant and animal life; soils geography (see Soil; Soil Management), which is concerned with the distribution of soil; hydrographic, which concerns the distribution of seas, lakes, rivers, and streams in relation to their uses; oceanography, which deals with the waves, tides, and currents of oceans and the ocean floor; and cartography, or mapmaking through graphic representation and measurement of the surface of the earth.

Marco Polo

Marco Polo (1254-1324), Venetian traveler and author, who’s account of his travels and experiences in China offered Europeans a firsthand view of Asian lands and stimulated interest in Asian trade.

Marco Polo was born in Venice, one of the most prominent centers of trade in medieval Europe, into a merchant family.  Venetian merchants of the day traded regularly throughout the Mediterranean region.  They also maintained trading posts in port cities on the Black Sea, where they obtained silk, porcelain, and other goods that came from China over the Silk Road, an ancient trade route linking China with Rome.  Little is known about Marco Polo’s early life, because his own account of his travels, published later in his life, is the primary source of biographical material about him.  Polo probably received a fairly typical education for children of merchants at that time, learning how to read, write, and calculate.

Marco Polo’s account is also the primary source of information about the travels of his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, who were jewel merchants.  They left Venice in 1260 on a commercial venture to the Black Sea ports of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) and Soldaia (now Sudak, Ukraine).  From Soldaia they continued farther east to trading cities on the Volga River in present-day Russia.  In 1262 a war broke out behind them and prevented them from returning home, so they proceeded farther east to the great Central Asian trading city of Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan).  After three years there they joined a diplomatic mission going to the court of Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler of China.  The khan received them warmly and expressed a desire to learn more about Christianity.  He asked the Polo brothers to return to Europe and persuade the pope to send Christian scholars who could explain the religion to him. Niccolò and Maffeo journeyed back to Europe in 1269 to satisfy the khan’s request.

The pope appointed two missionaries to accompany the Polo’s on their return to the Mongol court.  The party set out in 1271, this time with Niccolò’s son Marco.  Soon after their departure from Acre (now ‘Akko, Israel) the missionaries became concerned about hazardous conditions along the route and abandoned the embassy.  The three Polo’s continued the journey.  Judging from Marco’s account, they most likely traveled overland through Armenia and Persia (now Iran) to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, north through Persia to the Oxus River (now Amu Darya) in Central Asia, up the Oxus to the Pamir’s, across the mountains and around the southern edge of the Takla Makan Desert to Lop Nur (in present-day Xinjiang Uygur (Uighur) Autonomous Region in western China), and across the Gobi Desert.  In 1275 they reached the summer court of Kublai Khan at Shangdu (about 300 km/about 200 mi north of present-day Beijing).  Marco’s account records that the khan warmly welcomed the party and arranged accommodations for them.

The Polo’s spent the next 17 years in China.  Kublai Khan took an immediate liking to Marco, who was an engaging storyteller and conversationalist, and sent him on numerous diplomatic missions throughout his empire.  Marco not only carried out his diplomatic assignments but also regaled the khan with interesting stories and observations about the lands he visited.  His missions took him to Sichuan Province in southern China and Yunnan Province in the southwest, as well as northern Burma (now Myanmar).  Marco reported that apart from entrusting him with diplomatic missions, Kublai Khan also made him governor for three years of the large commercial city of Yangzhou.  Most modern scholars doubt this claim, but it is possible that Marco held some sort of post at Yangzhou, because the Mongol rulers of China routinely appointed foreign administrators to oversee the affairs of their Chinese subjects.

According to Marco’s travel account, the Polo’s asked several times for permission to return to Europe, but Kublai Khan appreciated the visitors so much that he would not agree to their departure.  In 1292, however, the khan relented and permitted the Polo’s to return if they would serve as escorts for a Mongol princess traveling by sea to marry the Mongol ruler of Persia.  The party departed from the southern Chinese port city of Quanzhou (in present-day Fujian Province) and sailed to Sumatra, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), southern India, and the Persian Gulf.  After seeing the princess safely to Iran, the three Polo’s traveled overland through Tabrīz to Trebizond (now Trabzon, Turkey), where they took a ship to Constantinople and then to Venice, arriving home in 1295.

Contemporary accounts hold that when Marco Polo returned, the youth of Venice flocked to his home to hear his stories about the lands he had visited.  Marco himself became known as il milione (“the man with a million stories”) and Marco milione (“Marco Millions”), and the courtyard of his home became known as the corte del milione (“court of il milione”).

In 1298 Marco became involved in a naval conflict between Venice and its commercial rival Genoa.  He fell captive, along with 7000 of his compatriots, when the Genoese navy defeated a Venetian fleet in which Marco was an honorary commander.  During his year of imprisonment he passed the time by telling stories.  His tales attracted the attention of a romance writer from Pisa named Rustichello, who had written two popular romances about King Arthur.  Rustichello recognized Marco’s stories as fascinating material.  He prepared an account of Marco’s travels in a literary dialect of French, the most commonly used language for works of adventure and romance.

Rustichello frequently embellished Marco’s story.  For instance, his description of the Polo’s’ arrival at Kublai Khan’s court strongly resembles a scene in one of his Arthurian romances, and his description of battles also followed formulas that he had used in earlier works.  Nevertheless, the book was extremely popular, and translations soon became available in Latin, Italian, Venetian dialect, English, and other languages.  The English translation of the original title of the book was The Description of the World.  Later editions and translations of Marco’s travel account have appeared under several different titles, including Il milione, The Book of Marvels, The Book of Marco Polo, and The Travels of Marco Polo.  After his release from prison Marco returned to Venice, where he died in 1324.

Marco Polo’s account of his travels exercised deep influence on European readers.  Cartographers looked to it for information about Asian lands, and merchants drew inspiration from it when they planned commercial ventures.  Portuguese mariners studied it when they decided to seek a sea route to India in the 15th century. Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus owned a Latin translation of the work, which he read carefully.  His copy still survives, along with his handwritten annotations in the margins.  Columbus relied heavily on Marco Polo’s geography when planning his own voyage to reach Asian markets by sailing west from Europe.

In the 20th century some scholars have raised questions about the accuracy of Marco Polo’s account.  Some have even suggested that he did not actually travel to China but rather told stories that he heard from others who did go there. Doubts have arisen largely from the fact that Marco’s work does not mention several distinctive characteristics of Chinese society.  Such omissions include the use of chopsticks as eating utensils; the drinking of tea; the use in written language of ideograms—that is, characters representing things or ideas without expressing pronunciation; the binding of girls’ feet to prevent normal growth (tiny feet were considered to enhance women’s beauty); and the existence of the Great Wall, a fortification running along the northern and northwestern frontiers of China.

In response to the critics, other scholars have pointed out that Marco lived among Mongol rulers rather than Chinese subjects and therefore would have had little or no exposure to chopsticks, tea, foot-binding, or Chinese written language.  As for the Great Wall, it did not exist in its present form until the 16th century, long after Marco’s death.  Furthermore, many of the ambiguities in Marco’s account are attributable to Rustichello, who cast the work in a form that he thought would be popular.  Finally, Marco’s account recorded many aspects of Mongol and Chinese society in convincing detail.  These features include the Mongols’ road and postal system, the careers of Mongol administrators in China, Kublai Khan’s personality, Mongol court life, and descriptions of important cities such as Shangdu, Khanbaliq, Hangzhou, and Quanzhou. Contributed By:  Jerry Bentley

Chronology of Cartography

2300 BC:  Babylonians make the first maps.  Babylonians create the earliest-known maps on clay tiles.  Most of these maps are land surveys made for the purpose of collecting taxes.

1000 BC:  Babylon Creates First Global Map.  A clay tablet is made in Babylon depicting Earth as a disc surrounded by water with Babylon at its center—the first map of the world.

550 BC:  Anaximander Maps the World.  Greek philosopher and mathematician Anaximander makes the first known map of the world.  Circular in form, it shows the known lands of the world grouped around the Aegean Sea and surrounded by ocean.  It was circular in form and showed the known lands of the world grouped around the Aegean Sea at the center and surrounded by the ocean.

240 BC:  The geographer Eratosthenes established the principles of scientific cartography and produced a strikingly accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth on the basis of evidence collected by Hellenistic explorers.

200 BC:  One of the most famous maps of classical times was drawn by the Greek geographer Eratosthenes.  It represented the known world from England on the northwest to the mouth of the Ganges River on the east and to Libya on the south.  This map was the first to be supplied with transverse parallel lines to show equal latitudes.  The map also had some meridians of longitude but they were irregularly spaced.  More extensive regional maps, drawn on silk and dating back to this century, have been found in China.

100 BC:  Primitive astrolabes (an early astronomical instrument) had been developed to help determine latitude.  Thus, seafarers could determine their position at sea.

100 AD:  The Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy compiled most Greek and Roman geographic knowledge up to his time.  He also proposed new methods of mapmaking, including projection and the creation of atlases.  In his famous Geographike syntaxis, Ptolemy divided the equatorial circle into 360 degrees and constructed an imaginary north-south, east-west network over the surface of the earth to serve as a reference grid for locating the relative positions of known landmasses, such as islands and continents.

150 AD:  The Alexandrian scholar Ptolemy published his geography containing maps of the world.  These were the earliest maps to use a mathematically accurate form of conic projection, although they incorporated many errors, such as the excessive extent of the Eurasian landmass. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, European mapmaking all but ceased; such maps as were made were usually drawn by monks, who often portrayed the earth inaccurately.

12^th  Century AD:  The art of mapmaking was advanced in both the Maya and Inca civilizations, and the Inca made maps of the lands they conquered.

The Chinese used a lodestone spoon spinning on a bronze plate as an early compass to determine direction when visibility was poor.  The magnetic compass was being used as a navigation aid.

1154:  Arabian seamen, however, made and used highly accurate charts during this same period. The Arabian geographer al-Idrisi made a map of the world.

13^th Century:  Mediterranean navigators prepared accurate charts of that sea, usually without meridians or parallels but provided with lines to show the bearings between important ports. These maps are usually called portolano or portolan charts.

1260:  Marco Polo’s account is also the primary source of information about the travels of his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, who were jewel merchants.  They left Venice in 1260 on a commercial venture to the Black Sea ports of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) and Soldaia (now Sudak, Ukraine).  From Soldaia they continued farther east to trading cities on the Volga River in present-day Russia.

1262:  A war broke out behind them and prevented them from returning home, so they proceeded farther east to the great Central Asian trading city of Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan).

1265:  After three years after the war of 1262, they joined a diplomatic mission going to the court of Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler of China.  The khan received them warmly and expressed a desire to learn more about Christianity.  He asked the Polo brothers to return to Europe and persuade the pope to send Christian scholars who could explain the religion to him.

1269:  Niccolò and Maffeo journeyed back to Europe to satisfy the khan’s request.

1271:  The pope appointed two missionaries to accompany the Polo’s on their return to the Mongol court.  The party set out, this time with Niccolò’s son Marco.  Soon after their departure from Acre (now ‘Akko, Israel) the missionaries became concerned about hazardous conditions along the route and abandoned the embassy.  The three Polo’s continued the journey.

1275:  They reached the summer court of Kublai Khan at Shangdu (about 300 km/about 200 mi north of present-day Beijing).  Marco’s account records that the khan warmly welcomed the party and arranged accommodations for them.

1275-1292:  The Polo’s spent the next 17 years in China.  Kublai Khan took an immediate liking to Marco, who was an engaging storyteller and conversationalist, and sent him on numerous diplomatic missions throughout his empire.  Marco not only carried out his diplomatic assignments but also regaled the khan with interesting stories and observations about the lands he visited.  His missions took him to Sichuan Province in southern China and Yunnan Province in the southwest, as well as northern Burma (now Myanmar).

1292:  The Khan relented and permitted the Polo’s to return if they would serve as escorts for a Mongol princess traveling by sea to marry the Mongol ruler of Persia.  The party departed from the southern Chinese port city of Quanzhou (in present-day Fujian Province) and sailed to Sumatra, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), southern India, and the Persian Gulf.

1295:  After seeing the princess safely to Iran, the three Polo’s traveled overland through Tabrīz to Trebizond (now Trabzon, Turkey), where they took a ship to Constantinople and then to Venice, arriving home.

1298: Marco soon became involved in a naval conflict between Venice and its commercial rival Genoa.  In 1298 he fell captive, along with 7000 of his compatriots, when the Genoese navy defeated a Venetian fleet in which Marco was an honorary commander.  During his year of imprisonment he passed the time by telling stories.  His tales attracted the attention of a romance writer from Pisa named Rustichello, who had written two popular romances about King Arthur. Rustichello recognized Marco’s stories as fascinating material.  He prepared an account of Marco’s travels in a literary dialect of French, the most commonly used language for works of adventure and romance.

1298-1324:  Rustichello frequently embellished Marco’s story.  For instance, his description of the Polo’s’ arrival at Kublai Khan’s court strongly resembles a scene in one of his Arthurian romances, and his description of battles also followed formulas that he had used in earlier works. Nevertheless, the book was extremely popular, and translations soon became available in Latin, Italian, Venetian dialect, English, and other languages.  The English translation of the original title of the book was The Description of the World. Later editions and translations of Marco’s travel account have appeared under several different titles, including The Book of Marvels, The Book of Marco Polo, and The Travels of Marco Polo. After his release from prison Marco returned to Venice, where he died in 1324.

14^th Century AD:  With the increasing sea exploration of the world that began in this century, the art of mapmaking blossomed.  With accurate maps, explorers could find their way when their location was checked against known landmarks.

15^th Century:  The editions of Ptolemy's maps were printed in Europe; for the next several hundred years these maps exerted great influence on European cartographers.

Marco Polo’s account of his travels exercised deep influence on European readers.  Cartographers looked to it for information about Asian lands, and merchants drew inspiration from it when they planned commercial ventures.  Portuguese mariners studied it when they decided to seek a sea route to India.

Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus owned a Latin translation of the work, which he read carefully.  His copy still survives, along with his handwritten annotations in the margins. Columbus relied heavily on Marco Polo’s geography when planning his own voyage to reach Asian markets by sailing west from Europe.

1480:  The first European voyages to the northern coast of America were old and forgotten.  The Norsemen (Scandinavian Vikings) sailed from Greenland and stayed in Newfoundland for a time around 1000.  Some scholars argue that European fishermen had discovered the fishing waters off eastern Canada.

1484: Martin Behaim went to Portugal where he acquired a reputation as a mapmaker.

1492:  Martin Behaim creates the first Terrestrial Globe.  The German mapmaker constructs the first globe based on the latest cartographic information.  The globe revolutionizes how people look at the world.  He fashioned the globe, basing his work in part on the writings of the ancient Alexandrian geographer and astronomer Ptolemy and in part on the discoveries of various medieval writers, notably Venetian traveler Marco Polo.  The globe, which is in Nürnberg, perpetuated many of the geographical misconceptions common among Behaim's contemporary European cartographers.

1497:  But the first recorded voyage was made by John Cabot, an Italian navigator in the service of England, who sailed from England to Newfoundland.

1499:  The Spanish investigated further.  Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci sailed to the northern coast of South America and pronounced the land a new continent. European mapmakers named it America in his honor.

16^th Century:  Sebastian Cabot (1476?-1557), Italian navigator and cartographer, best known for his expeditions for Spain and England to South and North America during this century.

Many other cartographers produced maps that incorporated the ever-increasing information brought back by navigators and explorers.  It is Gerardus Mercator, however, who stands as the greatest cartographer of the age of discovery; the projection he devised for his world map proved invaluable to all future navigators.

The map of Japan was drawn by Flemish geographer Abraham Ortelius, relying on sailors’ charts, sketches, and written accounts.  While the map lacks northern Honshū and Hokkaidō islands, it does depict southern Japan with relative accuracy.

In response to the critics, other scholars have pointed out that Marco lived among Mongol rulers rather than Chinese subjects and therefore would have had little or no exposure to chopsticks, tea, foot-binding, or Chinese written language.  As for the Great Wall, it did not exist in its present form until the 16th century, long after Marco’s death.  Furthermore, many of the ambiguities in Marco’s account are attributable to Rustichello, who cast the work in a form that he thought would be popular.  Finally, Marco’s account recorded many aspects of Mongol and Chinese society in convincing detail.  These features include the Mongols’ road and postal system, the careers of Mongol administrators in China, Kublai Khan’s personality, Mongol court life, and descriptions of important cities such as Shangdu, Khanbaliq, Hangzhou, and Quanzhou.

1507:  A map was produced by Martin Waldseemüller, a German cartographer, probably was the first to apply the name America to the newly discovered transatlantic lands.  The map, printed in 12 separate sheets, was also the first to clearly separate North and South America from Asia.

1509:  Subsequently engaged as a cartographer by Henry VIII, king of England, he prepared maps of southwestern France for an invasion by Henry and his ally Ferdinand V, king of Spain.

1511:  Flemish was a geographer, mapmaker, and mathematician.  He is associated with the Mercator projection, a type of map designed especially for use in navigation.  Evidence does exist, however, that the projection was in use in 1511, before Mercator was born.

1513:  Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and in 1513 became the first of the European explorers of America to see the Pacific Ocean.  That same year another Spaniard, Juan Ponce de León, explored the Bahamas and Florida in search of the fountain of youth.

1519-1532:  Spain again led the way.  Hernán Cortés invaded Mexico in 1519, and Francisco Pizarro did the same in Peru in 1532.

1524-34:  Giovanni da Verrazano, in 1524, and Jacques Cartier, in 1534, explored nearly the whole Atlantic coast of the present United States for France.  By that time, Europeans had scouted the American coast from Newfoundland to Brazil.  While they continued to look for shortcuts to Asia, Europeans began to think of America for its own sake.

1525:  Cabot received command of an exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean.

1526:  Cabot reached the coast of what is now Brazil; near the estuary of the river he named the Río de la Plata (Silver River).

1537:  Mercator became a maker of instruments for drawing maps and making field surveys.  He produced his first map.

1541:  Mercator completed a terrestrial globe.

1544:  Cabot, during his last year in the service of Spain, completed an engraved map of the world.

1549:  Cabot settled later in England, and through the influence of friends and admirers in English court circles, he received a pension from King Edward VI of England, who also named him grand pilot of England.

1569:  Mercator Publishes New Map.  Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator publishes a map of the world that projects the earth’s spherical shape onto a flattened cylinder, in other words so that the lines of latitude and longitude meet at right angles.  Although this distorts some regions of the earth’s surface, it is useful to navigators who plot courses according to compass directions. Although evidence exists of such a map before Mercator was born, this type of map bears his name.

Mercator’s famous map of the world, drawn on the projection that carries his name, was published in Duisburg.

1570:  Abraham Ortelius (1527-98), Flemish cartographer and geographer, produced the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.  This atlas contained 70 maps, the largest collection of the time.

1575:  Ortelius became geographer to the court of Philip II of Spain, where he continued to publish studies of ancient geography and travel accounts.  Ortelius was also a collector and dealer in rare antiquities and maps.

1585-1595:  This map of Europe appeared in Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator’s world atlas, published in three volumes during this period.  Mercator’s work in collecting data and refining mapmaking methods greatly improved the accuracy and quality of maps.

17^th Century:  The accuracy of later maps was greatly increased by more precise determinations of latitude and longitude and of the size and shape of the earth.  The first maps to show compass variation were produced in the first half of this century.

1640:  Maps of North America drawn by French cartographers showed Lake Erie’s size, location, and configuration.

1645-47:  Pierre Gasendi’s scientific work was mainly in the fields of astronomy and cartography.

1655:  The first charts to show ocean currents were made.

1669: The first European known to have reached Lake Erie and the Ohio country that it borders was the French explorer Adrien Jolliet.

1670: European discovery of the Ohio River, which borders the Ohio country on the south, was probably made by noted French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle , although some historians dispute that claim.

1682:  Eusebio Francisco Kino, a mapmaker and Jesuit superior of an exploring and colonizing mission to Baja California, began the work that was to occupy him for the rest of his life.

18^th Century:  The scientific principles of mapmaking were well established and the most notable inaccuracies in maps involved unexplored parts of the world.  In the late 18th century, the initial force of world exploration subsided and as nationalism began to develop as a potent force, a number of European countries began to undertake detailed national topographic surveys.

1757:  The astrolabe was succeeded by the octant, and in 1757 the sextant was invented.  The sextant remained the most accurate device to measure latitude until the 20th century.

1768:  Cook’s talent for mapmaking made him a logical choice when the British government decided to launch a voyage to the Pacific.  Officially, the expedition was designed to observe the transit of Venus, a rare astronomical phenomenon that would be visible only in the southern hemisphere.  A second motive, however, was to search for Terra Australis, a large continent widely believed to exist in the far southern latitudes.

1793:  The complete topographic survey of France was issued in 1793; roughly square, it measured about 11 m (about 36 ft) on each side.  Britain, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, and other countries followed suit.

1803:  Lewis asked Clark to join him as co-leader on a government-sponsored expedition through the Louisiana Territory to the Pacific Ocean.

1804:  William Clark was the American soldier and explorer who, with Meriwether Lewis, led an expedition through the American Northwest in search of an overland route through the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean.  The expedition embarked from St. Louis, Missouri, and ended there two years later.

1807:  David Thompson, Canada's most prolific explorer—the fur trader and surveyor almost single-handedly mapped the nation's vast, unknown interior.  He covered 80,000 miles by foot, horseback, dogsled, and canoe, defining a fifth of the continent, compiling 77 volumes of journals about its geography, biology, and ethnography.  Equipped only with a brass sextant and a courageous heart, he made maps that rival images gleaned from today's satellites.  He was, some think, the world's greatest land geographer.  Thompson made Lewis and Clark look like tourists.

David Thompson was the first person to travel the length of the Columbia River.  American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark used a map adopted from one of Thompson’s in planning their famous expedition.  The pass Thompson discovered across the Canadian Rockies became an essential trade route for decades.  Yet Thompson is practically unmentioned in most history books.

1809:  After Lewis's death in 1809, Clark assumed responsibility for completing the report of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

1813-1821:  Native American agent and governor of the Missouri Territory, Clark earned the respect of many native people who knew him as “the red-head chief.”

1814:  Clark employed American financier and diplomat Nicholas Biddle to prepare the two-volume collection, finally published.  The large map of the West that Clark drafted for the report is a landmark in the geographic understanding of the American West.

1821:  When Missouri became a state in 1821, Clark was defeated in his bid to become governor. Although his power in Native American affairs was much diminished, Clark continued to act on behalf of the federal government.  At the time of his death, Clark had a national reputation as an authority on the West.

1855:  Nadar, French photographer, cartoonist, balloonist, and writer is also known for making the world's first aerial and underground photographs.  He was an ardent balloonist and patented the idea of taking photographs from a balloon for surveying and mapmaking.

1872-1879:  Henry Gannett (1846-1914), American cartographer, was born in Bath, Maine, and educated at Harvard University in the Lawrence Scientific School and the Hooper Mining School.  Gannett, a topographer for the Hayden Survey, directed by the American geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, prepared maps in Wyoming and Colorado.

1879:  In the United States the Geological Survey was organized in 1879 for the purpose of making large-scale topographic maps of the entire country.

1882:  The U.S. Geological Survey retained Gannett as chief geographer.

1880 (10^th)-1900 (12^th):  Gannett was the geographer for this period during the censuses of the U.S.

1891:  The International Geographical Congress proposed the mapping of the entire world on a scale of 1:1,000,000, a task that still remains to be completed.

1893:  He was one of the founders and later a president of the National Geographic Society. Among his works are A Manual of Topographic Surveying (1893), The Building of a Nation (1895), and Gazetteer of Texas (1902).

20^th Century:  Mapmaking underwent a series of major technical innovations.  Aerial photography was developed during World War I and used extensively during World War II in the making of maps. 

Some scholars have raised questions about the accuracy of Marco Polo’s account.  Some have even suggested that he did not actually travel to China but rather told stories that he heard from others who did go there.  Doubts have arisen largely from the fact that Marco’s work does not mention several distinctive characteristics of Chinese society.

1902:  Gannett was assistant director of the census of the Philippine Islands.

1907-08:  Gannet was assistant director of the census of Cuba.

1923:  Erwin Raisz (1893-1968), American cartographer and geographer was born in Levonca, Hungary (now located in Slovakia).  Educated in engineering and architecture at the Royal Polytechnicum in Budapest, Raisz traveled to the United States and studied geology at Columbia University. 

1924:  Fairchild began to focus on applying aerial photography to mapmaking (see Photogrammetry) and started an aerial surveying company.

1930:  Skilled in cartographic drafting, Raisz joined the Institute of Geographical Exploration at Harvard University and remained there for 20 years as a lecturer in cartography.

1938-1962:  Skilled in cartographic drafting, Raisz joined the Institute of Geographical Exploration at Harvard University in 1930 and remained there for 20 years as a lecturer in cartography.

1957:  The space age began with the launch of the first artificial satellite, thereafter satellites have been used to provide the data required for map making.

1966:  With the launching of the satellite Pageos, and continuing in the 1970s with the three Landsat satellites, the U.S. has been engaged in a complete geodetic survey of the surface of the earth by means of high-resolution photographic equipment.  In spite of the great advancements in cartographic technique and knowledge, substantial portions of the earth's surface have not been surveyed in detail. Surveying work continues, for instance, on the continent of Antarctica.

1970’s:  Advancements were made in computer-generated maps.  Data can be stored on the coordinates of a geographic area and on the distribution of statistical phenomena in the area.  A device such as a continuous-curve plotter enables a computer to draw accurate maps from the stored data.

1972:  Graves began creating paintings based on topographical maps of the moon's surface, of the ocean floor, and on varieties of camouflage in nature.

1992:  U.S. Probe Magellan Maps Venus's Surface.  The U.S. space probe Magellan maps 98 percent of the surface of Venus to a resolution of 100 m (350 ft).

Cartographers Biography

Sebastian Cabot (1476-1557).  Italian navigator and cartographer, best known for his expeditions for Spain and England to South and North America during the 16th century.

Cabot was probably born in Venice.  Although Sebastian Cabot claimed to have accompanied his father, John Cabot, to North America, it is unlikely he made a voyage to America until about 1508.  In that year it is believed he reached the coast of present-day Labrador and cruised northward as far as Hudson Bay.  Subsequently engaged as a cartographer by Henry VIII, king of England, he prepared maps of southwestern France for an invasion by Henry and his ally Ferdinand V, king of Spain.

In 1512, while abroad with the invasion force, Cabot entered the service of Spain.  After Ferdinand died, Cabot was retained by Charles I, King of Spain (later Charles V, Holy Roman emperor).  About 1518 Charles promoted Cabot to the rank of pilot major.

In 1525 Cabot received command of an exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean, and in 1526 he reached the coast of what is now Brazil, near the estuary of the river he named the Río de la Plata (Silver River).  Believing reports that the La Plata region contained vast amounts of gold and silver, he abandoned his mission and began exploring the area, conducting a fruitless search for wealth. 

When he returned to Spain in 1530, he was arrested, found guilty of mismanagement, and banished to Africa for four years.  Charles pardoned him in 1533, however, and restored him to his post of pilot major.  In 1544, his last year in the service of Spain, Cabot completed an engraved map of the world.  He later settled in England, and through the influence of friends and admirers in English court circles, about 1549, he received a pension from King Edward VI of England, who also named him grand pilot of England.

In 1551 Cabot founded and became governor of the Muscovy Company of Merchant Adventurers, an English trading organization.  On his initiative the company financed expeditions to search for the Northwest Passage, a sea route from Europe to Asia. Richard Chancellor, a navigator employed by Cabot, reached the Russian port of Arkhangelsk by way of the White Sea, laying the foundation for commercial relations between England and Russia.

Mercator Map of Europe appeared in Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator’s world atlas, published in three volumes between 1585 and 1595.  Mercator’s work in collecting data and refining mapmaking methods greatly improved the accuracy and quality of maps.

Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), Flemish geographer, mapmaker, and mathematician.  He is associated with the Mercator projection, a type of map designed especially for use in navigation. Evidence does exist, however, that the projection was in use in 1511, before Mercator was born. His work on the mathematical formulas for new map projections and in compiling geographic knowledge earned him a reputation as the outstanding geographer of the Renaissance.

He was born Gerhard Kremer at Rupelmonde, Flanders, now in Belgium.  After graduating from the University of Leuven in what is now Belgium, Mercator became a maker of instruments for drawing maps and making field surveys.  He produced his first map in 1537, and in 1541 he completed a terrestrial globe. Mercator and his family moved to Duisburg, Germany, in 1552 to escape religious persecution for their Protestant beliefs.

Mercator’s famous map of the world, drawn on the projection that carries his name, was published in Duisburg in 1569.  The projection is very useful to navigators because straight lines between any two points on such a map show a constant compass direction for the course of a ship.  Mercator worked on maps of Europe and other parts of the world.  In these maps he used new information to correct many inaccuracies in the maps of the ancient Alexandrian geographer Ptolemy, which for hundreds of years had been the standard source for mapmakers. Mercator was the first to use the word “atlas” for a group of maps.

The 16th century This map of Japan was drawn by Flemish geographer Abraham Ortelius, relying on sailors’ charts, sketches, and written accounts.  While the map lacks northern Honshū and Hokkaidō islands, it does depict southern Japan with relative accuracy.

Abraham Ortelius (1527-98), Flemish cartographer and geographer, who produced the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570).  This atlas contained 70 maps, the largest collection of the time.  Although many of the maps in the atlas were copies, and some were inaccurate, they were the best available.

In 1575 Ortelius became geographer to the court of Philip II of Spain, where he continued to publish studies of ancient geography and travel accounts.  Ortelius was also a collector and dealer in rare antiquities and maps.

Eusebio Francisco Kino (1645-1711), Italian explorer, cartographer, and missionary in southwestern North America was born in Segno.  Educated in mathematics and astronomy at Jesuit schools in Italy and Germany, Kino (also spelled Chini, Chino, or Quino) became a member of the Society of Jesus in 1669.  In 1681 he arrived in New Spain (now Mexico); in 1682 he published a pamphlet in Mexico City concerning his observations of a comet in Cádiz, Spain, in 1680.

Eusebio Francisco Kino, later in 1682, as mapmaker and Jesuit superior of an exploring and colonizing mission to Baja California, began the work that was to occupy him for the rest of his life.  In the region known as Pimería Alta, comprising what is now the southern part of Arizona and most of the Mexican state of Sonora, Kino spent nearly 30 years preparing maps, founding missions that eventually became towns and cities, and introducing agriculture and stock rising to the Native Americans.  His maps, one of which first showed Baja California to be a peninsula rather than an island, remained standard for over a century.

William Clark was the American soldier and explorer who, with Meriwether Lewis, led an expedition through the American Northwest in search of an overland route through the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean.  The expedition embarked from St. Louis, Missouri, in 1804, and ended there two years later.

William Clark (1770-1838), American explorer, Native American agent, and frontier politician, who served as co-leader, with Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806), the first overland exploration of the American West and Pacific Northwest. Clark was born in Caroline County, Virginia.

In 1784 the Clark family moved to the Kentucky frontier, establishing a plantation called Mulberry Hill near present-day Louisville.  Clark followed the powerful examples of his brothers Jonathan and George Rogers Clark, both of whom made military life the path to success.

In 1789 William joined a militia company and soon became an infantry officer in the army of General Anthony Wayne.  During service in the Indian wars in the Ohio Valley, Clark gained a reputation for leadership and courage.  He met Meriwether Lewis at this time when Lewis served briefly in Clark's rifle company.  Under General Wayne, Clark took part in the Battle of Fallen Timbers (near what is now Toledo, Ohio) in August 1794, which destroyed the power of the Native Americans in Ohio.  Clark also grew to be an experienced frontier diplomat, earning Wayne's praise for a dangerous scouting mission in 1796.  When debts incurred by George threatened Clark family lands in Kentucky and Indiana, William resigned his commission and spent the next eight years defending family interests.

In June 1803 Lewis asked Clark to join him as co-leader on a government-sponsored expedition through the Louisiana Territory to the Pacific Ocean.  Clark was promised a captain's commission to match Lewis's rank, but bureaucratic confusion made him a lieutenant.  Despite this, both Lewis and U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, who commissioned the expedition, always considered Clark an equal partner in command.

As commanding officers on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Lewis and Clark informally divided leadership responsibilities. Clark was the expedition's mapmaker.  Years of frontier experience had taught him to understand and record intricate terrain—land, rivers, and mountains.  Clark's army experience also prepared him to be the expedition's most able negotiator and diplomat, a role he played in many meetings with Native Americans.

The expedition to the Pacific made Clark both famous and influential.  For the rest of his life he played a key role as a Federal Native American agent and territorial politician.

In 1807 Clark was appointed agent for the tribes west of the Mississippi River.  During the War of 1812 (1812-1815), Clark worked to organize western defenses against British and Native American attacks.  At the end of the war Clark and other federal officials negotiated a series of Native American treaties that reestablished American power in the West.

As a Native American agent and governor of the Missouri Territory (1813-1821), Clark earned the respect of many native people who knew him as “the red-headed chief.”

After Lewis's death in 1809, Clark assumed responsibility for completing the report of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  Clark employed American financier and diplomat Nicholas Biddle to prepare the two-volume collection, finally published in 1814.  The large map of the West that Clark drafted for the report is a landmark in the geographic understanding of the American West.

When Missouri became a state in 1821, Clark was defeated in his bid to become governor. Although his power in Native American affairs was much diminished, Clark continued to act on behalf of the federal government. At the time of his death, Clark had a national reputation as an authority on the West.  Contributed By:  James P. Ronda

Henry Gannett (1846-1914), American cartographer, was born in Bath, Maine and educated at Harvard University in the Lawrence Scientific School and the Hooper Mining School.  He was (1872-79) a topographer for the Hayden Survey, directed by the American geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, preparing maps in Wyoming and Colorado.  The U.S. Geological Survey retained him as chief geographer in 1882.  Gannett was the geographer for the 10th (1880), 11th (1890), and 12th (1900) censuses of the U.S. and assistant director of the census of the Philippine Islands (1902) and Cuba (1907-8).  He was one of the founders and later a president of the National Geographic Society.  Among his works are A Manual of Topographic Surveying (1893), The Building of a Nation (1895), and Gazetteer of Texas (1902).

Erwin Raisz (1893-1968), American cartographer and geographer, was born in Levonca, Hungary (now located in Slovakia) and educated in engineering and architecture at the Royal Polytechnicum in Budapest.  Raisz traveled to the United States in 1923 and studied geology at Columbia University.  Skilled in cartographic drafting, Raisz joined the Institute of Geographical Exploration at Harvard University in 1930 and remained there for 20 years as a lecturer in cartography.

Raisz produced hundreds of maps, two atlases, and three books: General Cartography (1938; revised 1948), Mapping and the World (1956), and Principles of Cartography (1962). General Cartography was the first North American textbook on the subject.  The book helped establish the link between cartography and geography in the United States, where the two disciplines now are usually taught together. Raisz is well known also for his detailed landform maps of the continents, which are rich in pictorially presented terrain information.  Contributed By:  A. Jon Kimerling

Anaximander (circa 611-c. 547 bc).  Greek philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer born in Miletus in what is now Turkey.  He was a disciple and friend of the Greek philosopher Thales. Anaximander is said to have discovered the obliquity of the ecliptic, that is, the angle at which the plane of the ecliptic is inclined to the celestial equator.  He is credited with introducing the sundial into Greece and with inventing cartography. 

Anaximander's outstanding contribution was his authorship of the earliest prose work concerning the cosmos and the origins of life.  He conceived of the universe as a number of concentric cylinders, of which the outermost is the sun, the middle is the moon, and the innermost is the stars.  Within these cylinders is the earth, unsupported and drum-shaped.  Anaximander postulated the origin of the universe as the result of the separation of opposites from the primordial material.  Hot moved outward, separating from cold, and then dry from wet.  Further, Anaximander held that all things eventually return to the element from which they originated.

Eratosthenes (276?-196? bc).  Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and poet who measured the circumference of the earth with extraordinary accuracy by determining astronomically the difference in latitude between the cities of Syene (now Aswān) and Alexandria, Egypt.  He was born in Cyrene (now Shahhāt, Libya).  Among his teachers was the Greek poet Callimachus.  About 240 bc, Eratosthenes became the head of the library at Alexandria, Egypt.  His calculation of the earth's circumference was only about 15 percent too large.  Eratosthenes also measured the obliquity of the ecliptic with an error of only seven minutes of arc and created a catalog (now lost) of 675 fixed stars.  His most important work was a systematic treatise on geography.  After becoming blind, he died in Alexandria of voluntary starvation.

Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464).  German cardinal, scholar, mathematician, scientist, and philosopher.  As a doctor of Canon law, he wrote (1433) in defense of the conciliar theory that asserted the supremacy of church councils over the pope.  Later, however, he reversed his position and became an ardent supporter of the papacy.  In 1450 he was made bishop of Brixen, or Bressanone, an ecclesiastical principality.  The Habsburg archduke Sigismund strongly opposed the appointment because of Cusa’s proposals for reform.  Sigismund briefly imprisoned Cusa, and, as a result, the archduke was excommunicated.

Cusa was learned not only in theology but also in mathematics, science, and philosophy.  An opponent of Scholasticism, he argued that true wisdom lies in the recognition of human ignorance and that knowledge of the deity is possible only through intuition, a higher state of intelligence.  Cusa anticipated the teachings of Giordano Bruno, and he suggested a reform of the calendar later carried out by Pope Gregory XIII.  His theory on the rotation of the earth predated that of Copernicus by nearly a century.  Cusa also became involved in scientific experimentation, diagnostic medicine, botany, cartography, and manuscript collecting.  Among his discoveries were 12 comedies by the Roman playwright Plautus.

Martin Behaim (1459-1507).  German geographer born in Nürnberg.  In 1484 he went to Portugal, where he acquired a reputation as a mapmaker.  He claimed, probably falsely, to have accompanied the Portuguese navigator Diogo Cam in 1484 on a voyage along the western coast of Africa.  In 1492 he fashioned a terrestrial globe, basing his work in part on the writings of the ancient Alexandrian geographer and astronomer Ptolemy and in part on the discoveries of various medieval writers, notably Venetian traveler Marco Polo.  The globe, which is in Nürnberg, perpetuated many of the geographical misconceptions common among Behaim's contemporary European cartographers.

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655).  French philosopher and savant, born in Champtercier, near Digne, and educated at Digne and at the universities of Aix-en-Provence and Avignon.  In 1617 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Aix-en-Provence.  During the next years he taught, traveled to Flanders and Holland, and worked on studies in science and philosophy.  In 1634 he was appointed provost of the cathedral at Digne, and in 1645 he became professor of mathematics at the Collège Royal in Paris. He retired in 1648.

As a philosopher he first became known through his attacks on the theories of Aristotle; he also participated in a controversy with the French philosopher René Descartes over the nature of matter.  In 1647 his De vita et Moribus Epicuri (On the Life and Character of Epicurus) was published, followed two years later by two more works on the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus.  Gassendi's theories are considered to have prepared the way for modern empirical methods, anticipating those of the English philosopher John Locke and the French philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac.  He was chiefly responsible for reviving interest in the philosophy of Epicureanism in modern times.  His scientific work was mainly in the fields of astronomy and cartography.

Eduard Imhof, (1895-1986).  Swiss cartographer who was a leader in establishing cartography in Europe as a discipline separate from geography and surveying.  Imhof was born in Schiers in Graubünden Canton.  Educated in Switzerland, Imhof served for four decades (1925-1965) as director of the Cartographic Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, where he also taught cartography.  He was elected the first president of the International Cartographic Association in 1959.

Imhof was a renowned expert in representing alpine terrain by shaded relief, a method of shading and shadowing landforms to create maps with a realistic, three-dimensional appearance.  Also known for his many publications, Imhof wrote two widely acclaimed textbooks about terrain representation: Terrain et Carte (1951; Terrain and Map,1951) and Kartographische

Sherman Mills Fairchild (1896-1971).  American inventor and manufacturer, Fairchild made major advances in aerial photography (see Photography) and aeronautic technology.  He invented several cameras and developed the first airplanes in the United States to have enclosed cockpits.

Fairchild was born in Oneonta, New York.  He entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1915.  In 1916 he invented a flash camera to take photographs for a campus publication.  The threat of tuberculosis forced him to leave Harvard in 1916 and move to Arizona, where he studied aerial photography and manufacturing techniques. 

While in Arizona he invented an aerial camera that had significant advantages over existing aerial cameras.  The camera, usually pointed vertically downward beneath a plane, has lenses, film, and other components specially adapted for taking aerial photographs.  The camera photographically recorded both small and large portions of the earth’s surface and its ground features.  The pictures were taken in sequence and overlapped one another to completely cover the object in focus.

In 1918 Fairchild moved to New York City and enrolled in Columbia University but left Columbia in 1920 to form his own company manufacturing aerial cameras.  Fairchild began to focus on applying aerial photography to mapmaking (see Photogrammetry) and in 1924 started an aerial surveying company.

Fairchild’s dissatisfaction with the suitability of existing airplanes for aerial photography led him to develop his own airplanes.  The FC-1, his first plane, was finished in 1927 and included an enclosed cabin and folding wings.  His C-119 transport plane, put into use in 1948, was the first to have rear cargo doors.

In 1953 he combined his interests in cameras and aircraft once again and invented the Fairchild Flight Analyzer camera.  It was the first camera that could take a series of pictures of an object in motion without distorting the image of the object.  Pilots and aeronautic engineers used the camera to track guided missiles and study the takeoffs and landings of missiles and planes.

Fairchild is also credited with inventing a radio compass and introducing such important components of modern planes as hydraulic brakes and hydraulic landing gears.  He eventually grouped all of his companies under Fairchild Industries, headquartered in Farmington, New York. Fairchild remained chairman of the company until his death in 1971.

Nancy Graves (1940-1995).  American sculptor, painter, and producer of several short motion pictures, who drew inspiration from the natural sciences, including paleontology and cartography. Her scientific approach to making art also extended to her work in bronze casting, leading her to a systematic exploration of the artistic and technical possibilities of this sculptural medium.  In 1969 Graves became the first woman to be the subject of a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Graves was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and earned a B.A. degree in English from Vassar College in 1961.  She then attended Yale University where she earned a B.F.A. (bachelor of fine arts) degree in 1962 and an M.F.A. (master of fine arts) degree in 1964.  In 1965 Graves began a detailed artistic investigation of the camel, including studies of the animal's anatomy, form, movements, and cultural significance.  Sculptures, including several 2.3 m (7.5 ft) tall realistic facsimiles of camels, as well as films and drawings based on this theme formed the content of her solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 1969.

In 1972 Graves began creating paintings based on topographical maps of the moon's surface, of the ocean floor, and on varieties of camouflage in nature.  She explored this theme further with her short film Reflections of the Moon (1974), 33 minutes of black-and-white footage using still photographs of the surface of the moon.  This is one of five short films Graves created in the early and mid-1970s, including two on the subject of camels.

By the late 1970s Graves had returned to making sculpture but embarked in a new direction. Graves's sculptural works after 1979, consisting of cast bronze objects welded together to form precariously balanced open structures, are formal, abstract, and whimsical.  In these works, Graves used the technique of direct casting, in which forms made of heat-perishable elements that can be burned away in the mold-making process are used in place of models carved from wax.  Using this technique, Graves cast an eclectic variety of objects, including cucumbers, straw baskets, paper fans, sardines, pigs' entrails, and rope.  She then welded the resulting objects into fanciful conglomerations and colored them with bright patinas, baked enamel glazes, or polyurethane paints.

Although Graves was influenced by the minimal and conceptual art prevalent during her lifetime, the emphasis in her later work with welded open structures rather than with solid masses links her more closely to earlier modernist sculptors such as Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and American artist David Smith.  Moreover, her use of absurd juxtapositions in these sculptures is reminiscent of the works of surrealist artists of the early 20th century (see Surrealism).  Graves's works are displayed in major museums of several countries, and she has received numerous honorary awards.

Summary

The basic type of map used to represent land areas is the topographic map.  Such maps show the natural features of the area covered as well as certain artificial features known as cultural features.  Hydrographic charts are used for the navigation of ships and cover the surface of the oceans and other large bodies of water and their shores.  Aviation charts for use over land somewhat resemble topographic maps but bear in addition the location of radio beacons, airways, and the areas covered by the beams of radio range stations.  Special-purpose maps include political maps, which show only towns and political divisions without topographic features; geologic maps, showing the geologic structure of an area; and maps indicating the geographic distribution of crops, land use, rainfall, population, and hundreds of other kinds of social and scientific data.  The relief map is a three-dimensional model of the terrain of an area.

For the representation of the entire surface of the earth without any kind of distortion, a map must have a spherical surface; a map of this kind is known as a globe.  A flat map cannot accurately represent the rounded surface of the earth except for very small areas where the curvature is negligible.  Geometric projections are classified according to the type of surface on which the map is assumed to be developed, such as cylinders, cones, or planes; plane projections are also known as azimuthally or zenithal projections. Analytical projections are developed by mathematical computation.

In making a cylindrical projection, the cartographer regards the surface of the map as a cylinder that encircles the globe, touching it at the equator.  The parallels of latitude are extended outward from the globe, parallel to the equator, as parallel planes intersecting the cylinder.

The familiar Mercator projection, developed mathematically by the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator, is related to the cylindrical projection, with certain modifications.  A Mercator map is accurate in the equatorial regions but greatly distorts areas in the high latitudes.  Any line cutting two or more meridians at the same angle is represented on a Mercator map as a straight line.

This group of map projections is derived by projecting the globe onto a plane that may be tangent to it at any point.  The group includes the gnomonic, orthographic, and stereographic plane projections.  Two other types of plane projections are known as the azimuthally equal area and the azimuthally equidistant; they cannot be projected but are developed on a tangent plane.

Map making has been traced back to the Babylonian times.  Map making, or cartography, has been greatly assisted by technological advancements since World War II.  The latest techniques of the 20th Century are: aerial photography (including infrared photography) and satellite photography.  Satellite triangulation has substantially reduced the margin of error in determining the exact location of points on the earth's surface.  Among the more recent innovations has been the use of the computer to draw maps.

Send and writhen by Dr. Frank J. Collazo

Publish by Ramon Luis Vazquez EDITOR NOTICIASILLESCANOS.COM

Biography

Maps, Contributed By:  Van H. English, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Cartographic Surveying, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

American Exploration, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Physical Geography, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Marco Polo Explorations, Contributed By:  Jerry Bentley, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Sebastian Cabot, Biography, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Gerardus Mercator, Biography, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Abraham Ortelius, Biography, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Eusebio Francisco Kino, Biography, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

William Clark, Biography, Contributed By:  James P. Ronda, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Henry Gannett, Biography, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Erwin Raisz, Biography, Contributed By:  A. Jon Kimerling, Microsoft® Encarta® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Anaximander, Greek philosopher, Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Eratosthenes, Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer, Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Nicholas of Cusa, German cardinal, scholar, mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Martin Behaim, German geographer, Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Pierre Gassendi, French philosopher and savant Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Eduard Imhof, Swiss cartographer, Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Sherman Mills Fairchild (1896-1971), American inventor and camera manufacturer, Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Nancy Graves, American sculptor, painter, and producer of several short motion pictures, Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

European Exploration and Settlement, Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.