Cartography

CARTOGRAPHY

CARTOGRAPHY. The science of mapmaking in the United States has developed along two main lines, commercial and governmental, producing different kinds of maps for different purposes.

Commercial Mapping and Mapmaking

Commercial or nongovernmental mapping and mapmaking began immediately after the Revolution with proposals by William Tatham, Thomas Hutchins, Simeon De Witt, and other topographers and geographers who had served in the army to compile maps of the states and regions of the United States. Since then, the three most widely published types of commercial maps have been geographical national and world atlases, county atlases, and individual maps.

Geographical atlases and maps were first published in the United States in the early 1790s—for example, Matthew Carey's American Atlas, published in Philadelphia in 1795. By the 1820s the best work was being done by Henry C. Carey and Isaac Lea, Samuel E. Morse and Sidney Breese, Henry S. Tanner, and John Melish. Melish's Map of Pennsylvania (1822) and Herman Böyë's Map of the State of Virginia (1826) are excellent examples of large-scale state maps. The principal centers of publication during most of the nineteenth century were Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Chicago.

Prior to the introduction of lithography in about 1830, maps were printed from copper engravings. Use of lithography expedited publication of maps in variant

---

forms and made them appreciably less expensive. These technical improvements rapidly increased commercial map publication. Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of white settlement into the West and the spread of American business interests abroad elicited a considerable interest in maps, either as individual state and county sheets or in atlases.

By midcentury, map publication was accelerated by the introduction of the rotary steam press, zinc plates, the transfer process, glazed paper, chromolithography, and the application of photography to printing. Two major map publishers, August Hoen of Baltimore and Julius Bien of New York, set the high standards of cartographic excellence during the second half of the nineteenth century. They produced many of the outstanding examples of cartographic presentation, especially those included in government publications. A. Hoen and Company was still making maps in the mid-1970s. Others who contributed significantly to the development of techniques of survey, compilation, and map reproduction were Robert Pearsall Smith and Henry Francis Walling. A uniquely American form of commercial map publication in the second half of the nineteenth century was the county atlas and, to some extent, the city and town map. In addition, the fire insurance and underwriters map was developed during this period. The Sanborn Map Company perfected these maps in great detail and, until the 1960s, kept them upto-date for most cities and towns of the United States.

During and after World War II commercial map production accelerated rapidly. Government mapping and mapmaking agencies contracted out to commercial map publishing firms large orders for many kinds of maps and atlases. Aerial and satellite photography, especially since World War II, has become a fundamental source of information in map compilation. Commercial map publication during the twentieth century expanded to include a wide variety of subjects, such as recreational, travel, road, airline, sports, oil and mineral exploration, and astronautical exploration maps, catering to a rapidly growing interest in graphic information. Using census and survey data, marketing firms have developed sophisticated maps to help them chart and predict consumer trends. In the late twentieth century, computer technology transformed the making and consumption of maps. Maps of high quality and detail, capable of being tailored to consumers' individual needs, became widely available in computer format. But computers and the Internet have also made it possible for noncartographers to produce and distribute maps of dubious accuracy.

Federal Mapping and Mapmaking

In a resolution of the Continental Congress on 25 July 1777, General George Washington was empowered to appoint Robert Erskine geographer and surveyor on Washington's headquarters staff. Under Erskine and his successors, Simeon De Witt and Thomas Hutchins, more than 130 manuscript maps were prepared. From these beginnings a considerable mapping program by the federal government has evolved that since the early days of World War II has literally covered the world, and since 1964, the moon.

In 1785 the Congress established a Land Ordinance to provide for the survey of public land, and in 1812 it created the General Land Office in the Department of the Treasury. The activity of this office has, in varying forms, continued to this day. Increase in maritime commerce brought about, in 1807, the creation of an office for the survey of the coasts, which, with several modifications and a lapse between 1819 and 1832, has continued through to the present as the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The rapid movement of population to the West and the large acquisition of lands by the Louisiana Purchase increased the need for exploration, survey, and mapping, much of which was accomplished by topographical engineer officers of the War Department.

Between 1818 and the eve of the Civil War, the map-ping activities of the federal government increased greatly. A topographical bureau established in the War Department in 1818 was responsible for a nationwide program of mapping for internal improvements and, through detailed topographic surveying, for maps and geographical reports. A cartographic office that was set up in the U.S. Navy Depot of Charts and Instruments in 1842 was instrumental in the mapping of the Arctic and Antarctic regions and the Pacific Ocean and in supplying the navy with charts. In the 1850s the Office of Explorations and Surveys was created in the Office of the Secretary of War, with a primary responsibility for explorations, surveys, and maps of the West—especially for proposed and projected railroad routes to the Pacific coast.

During the Civil War the best European surveying, mapmaking, and map reproduction techniques were blended with those of U.S. cartographic establishments—especially in the Union and Confederate armies. By the end of the war, which had revealed the inadequacy of map coverage for military as well as civilian enterprise, U.S. mapmaking was equal to any in Europe. A few of the mapping agencies created between the Civil War and World War I to serve the federal government's needs include the Bureau of the Census, which, beginning in 1874, published thematic demographic maps and atlases compiled principally from returns of the census; the Geological Survey, created in 1879 to prepare large-scale topographic and other maps, almost exclusively of the United States and its territories; the Hydrographic Office of the navy, established in 1866 to chart foreign waters; the Corps of Engineers, expanded greatly to undertake a major program of mapping and surveying for internal improvements; and the Weather Bureau, organized in 1870 in the Signal Office of the War Department to prepare daily, synoptic, and other kinds of weather maps.

World War I created a need for maps by the military, especially in Europe. Mapmaking and map reproduction units were organized and established in France. Some of the maps were made from aerial photographs and represented the beginning of modern quantitative mapping with a respectable degree of accuracy. New techniques of compilation and drafting and improved methods of rapid reproduction developed during the war accelerated and widened the opportunities for mapping during the 1920s and 1930s.

In part to provide work for unemployed cartographers and writers, during the Great Depression many specialized agencies were created to map a wide variety of cultural and physical features. Thematic and special-purpose maps—many of which were included with government reports—came into their own. Significant among the specialized agencies were the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Climatic and Physiographic Division, the National Resources Committee and Planning Board, and the Federal Housing Administration. Geographers played a leading role in the development of techniques for presentation, especially in thematic and resource maps, and in field mapping.

Mapping agencies proliferated in the federal government during World War II. The principal types of maps of this period were topographic maps, aeronautical and nautical charts, and thematic maps. Several hundred geographers in Washington, D.C., alone were given responsibilities for mapmaking and geographical interpretation, particularly in the compilation of thematic maps. The wide use of aerial photography during the depression was expanded to universal application, especially for the making of large-scale topographic maps. The Aeronautical Chart and Information Service, the Hydrographic Office, and the Army Map Service, with their numerous field units, were the primary agencies of production.

The postwar period witnessed the spread of military and scientific mapping in all parts of the globe. The development of color-sensitive photographic instruments, of highly sophisticated cameras in space vehicles, of automated cartography combining electronics with computer technology, of sensing by satellites in prescribed earth orbits, and of a host of other kinds of instrumentation has made possible a wide variety of almost instantaneous mapping or terrain imaging of any part of the earth. By the 1980s and 1990s these sophisticated maps had assumed a central role in military reconnaissance and field operations. The U.S. military's reliance on maps was made all too clear during the 1999 NATO action in Yugoslavia, when an outdated map of Sarajevo resulted in the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy there. As mapping has become an increasingly exact science, maps have become a fundamental source of information and a basic record in most agencies of the federal government.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Lloyd A. The Story of Maps. Boston: Little, Brown, 1949.

Cumming, William P. British Maps of Colonial America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

McElfresh, Earl B. Maps and Mapmakers of the Civil War. New York: Abrams, 1999.

Ristow, Walter W. American Maps and Mapmakers: Commercial Cartography in the Nineteenth Century. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1985.

Thompson, Morris M. Maps for America: Cartographic Products of the U.S. Geological Survey and Others. Reston, Va.: Department of Interior, Geological Survey, 1979.

U.S. National Archives. Guide to Cartographic Records in the National Archives. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971.

Wheat, James C. Maps and Charts Published in America before 1800: A Bibliography. 2d rev. ed. London: Holland Press, 1985.

Herman R. Friis / a. r.

See also Coast and Geodetic Survey ; Geography ; Geological Survey, U.S. ; Geophysical Explorations ; Maps and Mapmaking ; Printing Industry ; Surveying .