June 2014 – The Map Room

Finding Longitude

Published on 16 June 201412 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Major map exhibitions are frequently accompanied by lavishly illustrated books: London: A Life in Maps and the Magnificent Maps exhibitions had their eponymous books (London: A Life in Maps and Magnificent Maps), and the Chicago Festival of Maps was accompanied by Maps: Finding Our Place in the World.

No surprise, then, that “Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitude,” an exhibition opening at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich next month, also has its accompanying volume: it’s called Finding Longitude: How Clocks and Stars Helped Solve the Longitude Problem, and it comes out later this week. It’ll be interesting to see how this complements Dava Sobel’s Longitude, a short history of the Longitude Prize and Harrison’s chronometers (my review).

OpenGeofiction

Published on 15 June 201412 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Screenshot: OpenGeofiction

I love geofiction—creating imaginary worlds through maps—and OpenGeofiction is something I’ve wanted to see for a long time: a collaborative map of an imaginary world that is built with OpenStreetMap’s editing tools. The world is divided into territories, some of which any member can edit, others that are assigned to individual members (after a waiting period). More info here.

I’ve been playing with it and am already nervous about the amount of time I can see myself losing to this. (Though one wrinkle is having no real-world referents to determine scale: without GPS traces or aerial imagery, figuring out how big a house, or a cloverleaf loop, should be is going to be tricky.)

Previously: Ian Silva’s Koana Islands.

Mapping Gotham

Published on 1 June 201412 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Map of Gotham City I was not aware that Batman’s Gotham City has had a consistent map for the last fifteen years or so. Its geography was defined in 1998 by illustrator Eliot R. Brown for the “No Man’s Land” storyline but has been used ever since, including by the Christopher Nolan trilogy of movies. Brown describes how the map came to be on his website; the story has also been picked up by Smithsonian.com. Thanks to Caitlin and Dwight for the tip.