0 Map of the Week 4-2-2012: World's Largest Atlas

Earth Platinum, the World’s Largest Atlas, just published in a limited edition of 31 copies, at $100,000 each, pictured with Gordon Cheers, who spearheaded the 4-year project. The maps show geographic features  with an usually high amount of detail that is not possible to be shown on an ordinary scale map, including wee villages and mountain footpaths, and, for some odd reason, the location of shipwrecks! 

OK, this is HUGE!  The world’s largest Atlas, beating the previous contender by more than a foot.  It’s 6 feet high and about 9 feet across when opened up, and is the brainchild of Gordon Cheers, who hopes his atlas, Earth Platinum, will become as renowned and influential as the 1660 Klencke Atlas (below). 

The Klencke Atlas, no slouch when it comes to size, is about 5 feet high and 6 feet wide when opened.  It had been produced as a gift from the Dutch to King Charles II of England when the King was restored to his throne after many years of living in exile in Holland. King Charles was apparently a map enthusiast, and the Atlas, produced in the Golden Age of Dutch cartography, contained maps by Blaeu and Hondius, amoung other well-known map-makers of the day.  See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007hqxm for a short clip on the Atlas from The Beauty of Maps BBC series.
See the publisher’s website for full details on Earth Platinum:  http://www.millenniumhouse.com.au/title-earth-plat.html  

Some info about the cartography that went into the Atlas: http://www.millenniumhouse.com.au/assets/EPpressrelease1.pdf 

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/features/9460673.Atlas_scales_new_heights/?ref=la

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/6008545/Atlas-offers-giant-window-on-the-world

Also see the Strange Maps write-up at http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/559-cheers-bests-klencke-the-worlds-largest-atlas

And let’s not forget the folly of large maps, as per the infamous large map in Lewis Carroll’s “Sylvie and Bruno:”

“And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!”

“Have you used it much?” I enquired.

“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr. “The farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight!  So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”

Detail: Map of the Week 4-2-2012: World's Largest Atlas

0 The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live

 

Cartogram by Danny Dorling - Total Population

So, here we have something new and different: a book review by a guest blogger, GM Culp!  Thank you for contributing to the random notes: geographer-at-large blog!  Nice review, and of course, we LOVE Danny Dorling! 

The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live,

by D. Dorling, M. Newman and A. Barford

Reviewed by GM Culp, 02.19.2011

Chances are that while surfing information design or geography blogs you’ve encountered graphics similar to the one above. Perhaps you’ve seen one in poster form on the wall of the GIS lab or in the New York Times.  This cartogram is by Daniel Dorling, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield.  Although Dorling did not invent this form of presenting geographic data (hand drawn cartograms started appearing in the mid to late 1800s), he can definitely be credited with popularizing it among the data visualization set.  Back in the 1960s, Waldo Tobler developed a method utilizing the root mean squared error of unit densities to generate cartograms with a computer.  

Dorling’s cartograms are created using a method developed by two physicists, Michael Gastner and Mark Newman, and is based on principles behind the diffusion of fluid.  This software and datasets are available gratis from Dorling’s website [http://www.worldmapper.org/]. 

I received the revised and expanded edition of Dorling’s The Atlas of the Real World  (co-authored by Mark Newman and Anna Barford) as a holiday gift from my mother-in-law (along with two Toblerone candy bars…clever and delicious).  I must admit that prior to reading this text I was a bit put off by cartograms.  The idea of distorting land area seemed like a bad idea… particularly in an era when geographic illiteracy is commonplace among American school children.  [See the geographic literacy “quiz” and alarmingly sad results at: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/]

I was also a bit perplexed by Dorling’s Easter egg color palette.  All this and more is explained in the book’s introduction.  Dorling justifies the cartogram’s warping of geographic space by pointing out that all projections distort.  We live on a spherical planet thus some bending and stretching must take place to create a flat map.  The color palette was actually quite thoughtfully chosen.  Europe is represented by various shades of purple, the Americas by blues, Africa by greens and Asia by ochres.  The colors are different enough to allow users to easily identify areas in what are often severely distorted maps.  The palette is also used to color code the accompanying graphs.  Many of the data used comes from the World Bank and various United Nations programs.  The Atlas of the Real World is heavy, both physically and metaphorically.  There are 382 maps ranging in topics from poverty to deforestation to deaths from preventable diseases.  It should come as no surprise that the United States is one of the wealthiest nations [162] and also a top consumer of resources [343, 344, 348, 349] with the greatest military spending [310], number of prisoners [323], arms exports [311] and nuclear weapons [313].  Our ecological footprint is the largest [354] and we have the extinguished the greatest number of species [355].  While we are eating McDonalds [076], 48% of Bangladeshi children are underweight [175].  There are quite a few surprising and interesting tidbits, too.  Did you know that Monaco has 25,641 meters of road per square acre [052] or that Sweden generates over 7500 kilowatt hours of nuclear power per person [062]?  The majority of the world’s 150 million atheists live in East Asia [382] while 97% of spiritualists reside in South America [380].  Dorling’s cartograms are tragically beautiful.  Consider the map People Killed by Drought [303] where Africa is so distorted it resembles a lady slipper orchid or People Killed by Volcanoes [302] where one might mistake South America for a bouncing beach ball.  The Atlas of the Real World is an important volume and would be a welcome addition to any human geography, cartography, environmental justice, or information design library.

[http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Real-World-Mapping-Expanded/dp/0500288534/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1]

Detail: The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live