Spanning over two hundred years, these four maps illustrate the evolution of cartography from the artistry of the Dutch "golden age" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the more rigorously scientific maps of the "age of enlightenment." With...
Wall maps have a high mortality rate. They fray under their own weight; their heavy rollers drag down on them even more; even if backed onto cloth for support, the cloth is eaten by insects. They are blackened by the smoke and soot of open fires and ...
Manuscript maps -- which are written ("script") by hand ("manu") -- are generally held to precede printed maps. Historically, maps were made by hand before the introduction of printing. Technically, a map is first drafted by hand before a printing pl...
It is understandable, given the manner in which the history of the United States is intimately bound up with the expansion and use of its territory, that geography was a central component of school education. To be effective citizens, children had to...
Other aspects of the industrial revolution included a steady rise in the standard of living and an associated increase in the consumption of culture. Among the large and illustrated Bibles, prints by Currier and Ives, upright pianos, and ornate furni...
The industrial revolution entailed, among other things, the expansion of towns and cities, the continual reworking of urban infrastructures, and the increasing specialization of knowledge. Inevitably, there evolved several groups of professionals, ea...
Simultaneous with the production of folio atlases and geographies was the emergence of a "pocket" genre, often produced by the same cartographers or publishers (14, 15). This product was both portable and relatively inexpensive (12) in comparison to ...
The maps displayed on this wall are generally acknowledged to be cartographic treasures, as judged by conventional standards: they are old, rare, valuable, and historically important. They range in age from approximately 250 years (11) to more than 5...
This exhibition is about cartographic "treasures," which is to say maps and geography books which possess value. For most old items, that value is determined by beauty (1), rarity (2), or historical significance (3). Historians also value those works...
Five years ago the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education opened with an exhibition called Treasures of the Collection. The objects then on display were drawn from the library's two founding collections, formed by the late Lawr...
