A bit more on why British engineers would adopt the numerical ratio (1:x) of “map scale” later in the nineteenth century

A new page on this web site for biographical details of the people I’ve been writing about as map historians and map scholars.

I have been having great fun reading F V Botley’s 1952 MA thesis on patterns of usage of world map projections in USA and UK, 1850–1950

I’ve been trying to figure it out … what is the significance today of all that sturm und drang?

The annual round up of new books in map history, as I’ve noticed/seen/found.

Brief videos of my new exhibition at OML, in lieu of a web-version or printed catalog (both coming eventually). The show itself will hang through 29 June 2024.

Bernard Sleigh’s wonderful 1917 panorama and the British fad for all things fairy

(I can’t believe I failed to blog this before now!)

on the first facsimile collections of early maps produced in Paris in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, and their role in the formation of globalist and settler-colonial map history.