Category Archives: Cartography

The itinerary of Jan Huygen van Linschoten

Maps come in all sorts of formats and sizes, and they also come in all sorts of different mediums as well; globes, atlases and single sheets. As well as these early printed maps are often to be found in itineraries, those wonderful descriptions of early exploration, full of tales of new lands, new people, new customs. It was often in these itineraries that readers would first see in illustrations the strange new sights that they may have only heard about previously – imagine being told what an elephant looked like, and then seeing a picture of one – and the maps, though important in themselves as cartographic records, were more often than not secondary to the written narrative and illustrations.

One such itinerary is in the office at the moment. Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1611) was, as it seems with a lot of people we read about from these times, a bit of a polymath. Dutch merchant, traveller, writer and, intriguingly, a spy as well. Spy because he travelled extensively through Portuguese areas of influence in the Far East, especially around the Spice Islands of Indonesia, and then wrote about his travels in a book published in 1596, Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert, van Ian Huygen van Linschoten naer Oost ofte Portugaels Indien inhoudende een corte beschryvinghe der selver landen ende zee-custen… (Itinerary, voyage or navigation, of Ian Huygens from Linschoten to the East or Portuguese Indies containing a short description of the same lands and sea coasts…).

Here’s a beautiful double hemisphere World map from the start of the book with representations of the 4 continents in the corners. The map is by Jan Baptista Vrient, a Dutch geographer and cartographer.

There are a number of regional maps throughout the work, the most important considering what Linschoten’s work was dealing with was of the Far East, and the Spice Islands. The itinerary pre-dates the Dutch influence in the region but only by a few years, and the work had an influence on Dutch ambitions in the region. By the early 1600s the Dutch had started to gain control of the spice trade with the setting up of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the Dutch East India company in 1602.

As can be seen these are beautiful maps, hand-coloured and for the time accurate depictions of the regions shown.

As well as maps the books contain illustrations of flora and fauna, people and customs. Here’s a page showing different fruit trees (bamboo, mangrove and durian)

Another page has illustrations of temples and religious practises, including a pagoda and a mosque.

Itineraries have a long history, dating back to classical times in the form of a periplus, a list of destinations on a journey which would often then be expanded by Greek and other writers into more general histories through to itineraries like the one in this blog to works on travel writing as a form of social commentary (such as Daniel Defoe’s ‘Tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain’ (1724)) on to the current trend for travel writing as a form of entertainment. Linschoten’s itinerary is a wealth of information and illustrations of the people, customs, trade and geography of the Far East. It’s just one of a number of books he wrote in the 1590s about the region and of the voyage to get there along the east coast of Africa. An English translation was published in 1598.

And here’s our spy, looking quite dapper in his ruff and whiskers. It’s wonderful to imagine the adventures and sights seen by Linschoten on his travels.

Leo Belgicus

Leo Belgicus has to be one of the most famous, as well as pictorially pleasing, of all maps. What makes this map so interesting is its direct relationship with the events taking place at the time it was made, and how these events are reflected in the map.

Novissima, et accuratissima Leonis Belgici, seu Septemdecim Regionum Descriptio, from Atlas minor sive Geographia, compendiosa in qua orbis terrarium… c.1650. Map Res 34

The first version of the map was printed in 1583, these later editions were published by the famous family of Dutch cartographers, the Visschers, with the first by Claes Janszoon around 1611. This version is by his son Nicolaus, in an atlas whose title translates rather wonderfully as ‘Atlas minor, or Geography, a compendious account of the world’. That the group of nations know as the Low Countries can be mapped in the shape of a lion was a convenient way to show a group of 17 provinces when over half of those provinces had a lion on their shields, as can be seen along the top of the map.

The lion though can also be seen to symbolize war, and power, and it was to feature regularly on maps during the 80 Years War, a conflict between the Northern Provinces and the ruling power in the area, the Spanish Empire. We can tell this map has been printed during a short truce in the fighting between 1609 and 1621 because the sword held by the lion is sheathed, and held downwards. Maps made either side of the truce show the sword held high, ready for action.

The map, symbolic in itself with the form of a lion representing the outline of the countries as well as the individual provinces, is full of smaller symbolic references. Just above the base of the tail two women, representing the northern and southern half of the Netherlands, sit on an old man, ‘d’Oude twist,’ who represents the conflict that has hopefully now passed. Around the lion are pastoral scenes, showing the countryside at peace, with harvests gathered and villages and towns under repair or expansion (‘t’vergrooten der steden’ means the ‘enlargement of the cities’). In one of the stranger parts of the map a putto, a winged figure often found around cartouches on maps, has rather ungainly fallen out of heaven and has dropped a number of concepts in the shape of various associated objects, so the candle sticks represent wealth (‘rijckdom’), while the other objects symbolize art and science (hour glass, cross-staff, lead weight for reading depths at sea and so on), all for the benefit of a nation at peace.

The atlas, in 2 volumes, is a beautiful example of Dutch cartography during the golden age of the seventeenth century. The atlases are full of regional and country maps as well as maps of the heavens; it even has a page at the end full of different types of fortifications and instruments of war.

Many pages have elaborate cartouches, the title page gives a taste of the glories within. Here Geography, one of the muses, draws the globe while Poseidon stands by. Cybele, with her crown made of city walls, measures the earth while a lion stands by.

There’s a second Leo, in the atlas. Despite the raised sword which would suggest war this is a celebratory lion. The map was made in 1648, a year of treaties and negotiation finishing with the Dutch gaining independence from Spain.

Comitatus Hollandiæ denuo forma Leonis Map Res. 34

Italian maps from the Eastern front

We’ve written about Stalingrad before, maps showing different aspects of a battle which was a turning point in the Second World War, but a recent donation of maps to the library are of sufficient importance to warrant a new piece to add to these blogs on thematic mapping and name changes.

The maps are German army maps, mostly at 1:1,000,000 scale but almost all have manuscript annotations added to show the progress, positions and then retreat of the Italian 8th Army. The area covered is mainly northern Ukraine, generally from Crimea across to Stalingrad and north as far as Minsk. Front-lines, troop deployment, strength of remaining forces, depots and command centres are all shown, and as most of the maps are dated progress day by day can often be plotted.

German, Italian and Romania advances towards Stalingrad, 15th July 1942 (?), C40:6 (181) 1a

These maps are of historical importance. As well as Italian forces armies from Croatia, Hungary and Romania were on the Eastern Front but the main focus on Stalingrad has mostly been on the vast number of German troops that fought on the Eastern Front. These maps will go some way to shine a light on the other forces involved on the Axis side.

Soviet counterattacks and Stalingrad pocket, circa 9th Jan 1943, C40:6 (181) 1a

The maps are also amongst the most poignant in the collection. These maps show Axis forces advance from the Don with front-lines moving closer to the Volga before coming to a stop at Stalingrad. Then, with the launch of Operation Uranus in November 1942 Soviet forces push back Axis forces, and the front-line moves back towards the Don, the pocket around Stalingrad slowly diminishes along with the numbers of troops shown behind the retreating lines, until finally the pocket disappears and the words ‘Resti 6th Army‘ are crossed out in red pencil (Resti means ‘remains’ in Italian).

Stalingrad pockets, circa 13th Jan and 30th Jan, 1943. C40:6 (181) 1a

4th Feb 1943 C40:6 (181) 1

Maps such as these are rare in libraries such as the Bodleian. By their nature annotated maps made during war-time are often lost or irreparably damaged in the confusion of battle, especially when that battle involves a retreat such as the one involving the troops featured on the maps. We’re lucky to have such an important collection come to Oxford.

Good fences make good neighbours

In Robert Frost’s poem Mending wall two neighbours walk the shared boundaries of their properties, checking on the condition of the wall separating their land and making repairs where necessary. At one point the narrator teases his neighbour on the need for the wall, “My apple trees will never come across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him”. The neighbour replies, simply and memorably, “Good fences make good neighbours”.

Frost loves the phrase so much that it’s repeated again, to close the poem*, and I’m reminded of this when looking at these two estate maps, of Down Manor from 1718 and Mowden Hall, 1762, both in Essex. Both are typical examples of an estate plan, are in manuscript form and show the holdings and field names of each estate (with sizes in acres, roods and perches). The connection with Frost comes with both showing boundaries in two different colours, according to ownership and according to responsibility of maintenance, to mark the outer boundaries of each estate. Any boundary dispute in the future would be easily settled with reference to the map. The importance of boundary fences are obvious, the need to keep animals out of certain fields and in others, as a way of separating good land from not so good and as a way of marking the limit of your land from your neighbour. The Down Manor map nicely calls the fencing surrounding the property ‘Out fencing’.

A by-product of this in both maps is that those neighbours surrounding both Down Manor and Mowden Hall are named, so for instance we can see that the wonderfully named Mr Grump owed land to the south-east of Mowden Hall and the equally well-named Thomas Clutterbuck owed land just north of Down Hall, giving us a connection with those alive at the time the map was made.

Estate maps show the land owned by the local manor or estate, and are almost always privately commissioned works, which often lead to beautiful one-off maps such as the Down Manor map. These maps are historically important as they give a pre-enclosure view of the landscape and a record of who farmed this landscape. One of the most famous of all the estate maps is held in the Bodleian, of Laxton in Nottinghamshire, from 1635. We tell its story here and we’ve blogged previously about estate maps here, here, and here.

Most of the field names are explanatory, sometimes just size or use (Gravel Pit Field, Calves Pasture and so on) but some are more interesting. Great and Little Hungerdown in the Mowden map would suggest a poor field for growing crops on and needing much manure and feeding to make viable, while Bury Mead is a field near a moat or fortified building and Rushey pasture would be a poorly drained field, not much good for growing crops but ok for growing rushes, useful in chair making and hatching.

The Mowden map was first surveyed in 1723 by Daniel Halls, who is described in a dictionary of surveyors at the Bodleian as a Philomath in the year he surveyed the map. A Philomath is someone who loves learning. Halls’ map was then copied, the term used on the map is ‘diminish’d’, by Edward John Eyre in 1762. The owner of Mowden Hall, Brabezon Aylmer, also owed the paper mill near but outside his main land-holding. We can tell he owns the mill because the land included with the mill is delineated by the yellow line that the legend tells us ‘that the fence in the outward bounds of this map where it belongs to this estate is coloured with yellow…’.

A true map of the lands belonging to Mowden Hall together with a paper mill as they are situate lying and being in the several parishes of Ulting, Hatfield, Boreham & Little Baddow, Essex, belonging to Brabzon Aylmer, esq…1762. MS C17:28 (40)

Description of the Manor of Down Hall, situate and lying in the Parish of Rayleigh in the County of Essex. Containing altogether 170 acres, 1 rood and 2 perches being parcel of the possession of Edw. Downs Esq. and herein particularly measured in the year of our Lord 1718 by Will. Cole. 1718. MS C17:28 (88)

*Frost’s poem can be read here, it’s worth it Mending Wall | The Poetry Foundation

Maps on the radio

Two members of the Map Room team have recently been featured on WRFM, a local radio station based in West Oxfordshire. Science on the Radio is a weekly show, interviewing local experts across a range of fields connected with the sciences, presented by Nina Morgan and Grant Grindley. Broadcast every weekend, the show is also available online as an on-demand podcast.

‘Fascinating Maps‘ is a recent episode featuring Nick Millea, in which he talks about the 3D facsimile of the 15th century Gough Map of Great Britain (MS Gough Gen. Top. 16), recently produced by the Factum Foundation in Madrid. Nick explains that recent high resolution 3D recording of the map has revealed pinholes invisible to the naked eye, indicating that the map is a copy of an earlier map which does not survive. The 3D scanning unusually included the reverse of the map too, allowing confirmation that the pinholes only appear on the front of the map. Identical in size to the original, the facsimile has already proved useful for teaching and displays.

The Gough Map facsimile on display with other collections at a 'show and tell' event at the Weston Library. — The Gough Map facsimile on display with other collections at a ‘show and tell’ event at the Weston Library.

In ‘Digital Mapping‘, Martin Davis explains how some of our maps are being made available online via Digital Bodleian, and also why the digital maps we use every day pose new challenges for the library. While spatial analysis is something that we tend to associate with digital technology, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Martin explains that the origins of these techniques predate digital technology altogether; for example in the work of the 19th century epidemiologist John Snow on the spread of cholera.

Science on the Radio is broadcast on Saturdays at 10am and Sundays at 6pm, and available any time via wrfm.co.uk.

A change of address

In 1792 the noted engraver and cartographer John Cooke (1765-1845) moved from Drury Lane, London to Mill Hill. In a novel approach to a change of address card for existing and new clients Cooke made this map: ‘He has taken this method to inform them that he has removed from London to Mill Hill’.

A new map of the roads from London to Mill Hill & Barnet. By John Cooke, Engraver, at Mill Hill, Middx. 1792 Gough Maps Middlesex 46.

Cooke at this time must have been in his late twenties; he had left his apprenticeship some five years before. He had been apprenticed initially to bookbinder Mary Cooke (most likely a family connection) before transferring to the engraver William Wells and then John Russell, the latter an important cartographer and engraver of maps. Cooke had now embarked on what was to be a successful and productive career, with apprentices of his own and many works to his name. Although Mill Hill is today very much a suburb of London, at that time the area’s distance of eight or nine miles from Cooke’s previous base in the City would have seemed considerable. The map is very beautifully engraved, and serves to advertise the quality of Cooke’s work. Hills are indicated by delicate hachuring, and the hand colouring is sufficient to enhance the map without obscuring the fine engraving. The text panel explains that he has removed from London to Mill Hill, but that he is still at his customers’ service, since ‘the Mill Hill Errand Cart sets out every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from the Bull Inn, Holborn at one, and at two o’clock from the Cock in Tottenham Court Road…’ Distances are noted with tiny numbers along the roads. The map demonstrates how easily communications may be carried between London and Mill Hill. Cooke’s trade card at the time also included a detailed map of the area around his house.

Cooke was to switch between the country around the city and London a number of times. By the end of the century he was back in central London and employed to engrave charts for the Admiralty and for numerous private publishers. But we can only conclude that London living did not suit Cooke, for by 1817 he had made what was to be a permanent move to Plymouth, Devon, where he spent the rest of his reasonably long life. This seems like a surprising choice considering how central to the publishing industry London was but a large amount of Cooke’s work was to do with navigation and shipping and after his move he made numerous maps on Plymouth as the area grew in importance with the building and developing of new or existing docks by the Navy.

Here’s Cooke’s map of the new Breakwater being built in Plymouth Sound, which in 1806 had an estimated cost of £1,170,000 (£88,000,000 at current rate)

Cooke’s guide to Plymouth Sound and Breakwater, 1806. G.A. Devon 8° 341 (9)

Cooke’s most famous work, The Universal Atlas, was published in 1802 when Cooke was in Howland Street, London. Cooke made the maps, ‘accurately delineated by an eminent geographer‘ while the Rev. Thomas Smith wrote the introduction and the descriptions. Along with maps of the continents and countries there are maps of the Solar System and a ‘geographical clock’ designed by Cooke which works by moving the marker on the inner dial to a location, which then makes this location noon, from there all the other times can be read (so here it’s noon in London, so 1am in the Great South Sea).

The universal atlas, and introduction to modern geography, 1802, Gough Gen. top. 202

Many of Cooke’s customers from his later career appear to have been based locally in the West Country, although he had previously worked for some of the major London mapmakers. He also appears to have branched out into copperplate printing.

With the Mill Hill map Cooke shows his skills as both a cartographer and an engraver and this is as much an advertisement of his abilities as a notice of the change in address. He also cleverly makes the best use of the area he wants to show by including the change in angle north of Finchley and Hendon to come up with this beautifully designed work, allowing for text and compass rose to be shown in opposite corners. This strip approach to mapping brings to mind John Ogilby’s ground-breaking road maps of almost a hundred years before (see Measuring distances, a wheel or a chain? | Bodleian Map Room Blog).

Our Cooke, John, was one of a number of Cooke’s active in London at this time. His brother Stephen (1768-1854) was an apprentice to John in the 1780s. He remained in London and also had a long map engraving career, employed by such well known map publishers as William Faden and Laurie & Whittle. The brothers William Cooke (1778-1855) and George (1781-1834), no relation to john and Stephen, both worked with map-makers such as Arrowsmith as well as non-map engraving work.

Four seasons

Dating from circa 1670 this is a map from the Dutch Golden Age, when ships set out from the Netherlands to trade and set up colonies. The Dutch East India Company had trading posts throughout the Indies, controlled the spice trade and, for a time, was the only nation to have a trade link with Japan, while the Dutch West India Company were doing similar in South America. Trade and cartography went hand-in-hand, with high quality maps by the leading cartographers of the day helping in the exploration and navigation of these far-off places.

Nova orbis tabula, in lucem edita…F. de Wit, c1670. Map Res 110

Frederick de Wit’s Nova Orbis Tabula… is a lovely though fairly typical example of a World double-hemisphere map, but what is of interest are the wonderful representations of the seasons in each corner. These insets also feature, in three of the four, representations of the continents* as well.

Spring is represented by a maiden, often Persephone, the symbol of spring growth. To her left is a bull, the animal symbol along with a horse for Europe.

Summer is Ceres, Goddess of the harvest who represents Earth’s natural abundance. She’s also the mother of Persephone. Ceres often appears on maps and her control of the growth, harvest and dying back of plants during the year reflected human existence on earth. The lion is a symbol for Africa, and the scorpion in this case is one of the animals associated with Ceres.

With the harvest done Autumn is a time to celebrate, Bacchus represents this season, drinking wine and supported by a pair of satyrs, themselves representations of lust and mischief. Another scorpion, this time for Africa.

Finally Winter, whose symbol is an old King wrapped up against the cold. No animal representation for America, which is usually a crocodile or armadillo but the male goat can also be used as a symbol for winter, when they are generally more active as this is when female goats come on heat. Which leads to fertility, which leads us back to spring, and growth and abundance, and the cycle goes round again.

Symbolism is an important and fascinating part of cartography. At the very least these allegorical pictures fill what would be empty spaces but at the time the audience for the maps would have understood both the meaning and the message. The seasons seem an obvious topic for a map, as they signify not just the changes in the weather and the time of the year but mark the earth’s progress in space and around the Sun. But people would have also understood how this connection with time through the year was also linked with our journey through life, it’s no coincidence that Spring is shown as a young maid, Summer an Earth Goddess, Autumn an older man and finally an old man in Winter.

This is also a blog about people, with a strong connection to Oxford and the Bodleian. De Wit’s map seems to be a smaller version of larger World map with the same title from 1660. The map is the first in a collection of maps which have been bound together at some point, in an unknown hand the title is given as ‘The first volume in a collection of more than one hundred maps of all the Kingdoms and Provinces in Europe by severall authours…1691′. The connection with Oxford, and the probable reason for the volume ending up here at the Bodleian is that the atlas once belonged to William Charles Cotton, brother of Sarah Cotton. Sarah married Sir Henry Acland, one-time physician to the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII, see this blog ) and Librarian of the Radcliffe Science Library. Acland wrote a report in 1854 about cholera epidemics in the city, which included one of the earliest disease maps published in Britain (more on this map here) .

In 1839 Cotton was ordained a priest and in 1841 he sailed to New Zealand to be Chaplain to the newly appointed Bishop of New Zealand. He was also a noted apiarist, and wrote a number of books on bee-keeping (including the wonderfully titled ‘My Bee Book’, published in 1842 and written when he was a student at Christ Church in Oxford). Cotton spent seven years in New Zealand before returning to Britain. At the front of the atlas are a letter and a note from Cotton. The hand-writing for both is very hard to read, and parts of the letter have lines written over lines at right-angles, but both are to Henry Coxe, Bodley’s Librarian, in 1878 offering the collection of maps to the library, or ‘if not wanted to be returned to Mrs. Acland’. The Acland’s lived at numbers 39-41 Broad Street which in a remarkable coincidence was one of the houses knocked down for the building of what is now the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Library, and where the maps are stored (and from where I’m writing this piece).

* Since this blog went live a colleague in Theology has pointed out an alternative view of some of the figures represented, which makes more sense, and that is that the signs of the Zodiac are represented. So in Spring the bull also represents Taurus and the ram Aries. In Summer the scorpion is more likely a lobster, which would represent Cancer and the lion Leo. In Autumn the scales represent Libra, the lion Leo and the archer Sagittarius. Finally Winter, with the fishes Pisces and the goat Capricorn.

If that’s not enough, how many other maps feature someone being sick from too much drink?

How to make a map Soviet style. Part two.

We often tend to look on maps, and by extension all other forms of art or literature, as a finished thing. This is done without any thought but in doing so we miss out on the skill and work that goes into the making. We’ve blogged about the making of maps, the science of cartography, by both the Austrian military and the Soviet cartographic department before, and a recent donation to the library has added more material to this fascinating field.

Some map-makers maps are distinctive due to style or choice of colours, and that is certainly the case with this set of four educational maps at different scales, published by the Glavnoe Upravlenie Geodezii i Kartografii pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR, (Main Directorate of Geodesy and Cartography under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, otherwise known as the GUGK). The use of soft pastel colours is instantly recognizable as from the GUGK and seems in contrast to the impression we have of a Soviet style of brutalist architecture and politics, but does allow for a beautiful map design (more on Soviet mapping can be found here and here).

Of the four maps in the pamphlet, the one at 1:50,000 is the most informative. Around the edge are instructions on surveying, depicting relief and profile and making grids. Part of the relief instructions shows heights above sea levels in profile.

The maps date from 1987, an important time in the history of the Soviet Union. Despite the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and a new era of openness and more freedom than previously allowed under the concept of glasnost, the explosion and release of a radiation cloud over northern Europe from the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986 showed how weak and secretive the Soviet Union was (we blogged about Chernobyl here). Four years later, the Soviet system collapsed, bringing in a new, post-communist, Russia.

Despite the convincing topography these maps show imagined locations. The maps start at 1:100,000 then gradually focus on a smaller area as you go down through scales, like a cartographic set of Russian dolls. So the town of Snov (Снов) gets gradually bigger with each increase in scale down to 1:10,000 (1:100,000 top, 1:50,000 2nd, 1:25,000 3rd, 1:10,000 bottom).

This set will go into the O section of the map storage area, drawers full of maps of imaginary lands. Produced by the Soviet State to help their cartographers make maps of both the Soviet Union and many other countries, this set will lie in a drawer with maps of Middle Earth, the Island of Sodor and Ambridge.

Uchebnye topograficheskie karty, 1987. O1 (42)

Mapping Guyana

Earlier this month, the Map Room was visited by Christina Kumar; a cartographic advisor to the President of Guyana. Over several years, Christina has created a large and highly detailed map of Guyana, and kindly donated a copy to the Bodleian Library during her visit.

Christina Kumar presents the map to Map Curator Nick Millea

The map, more than 1.5 metres in length, provides a detailed picture of the country’s land cover at 1:600,000, as well as its settlements and transport infrastructure. Christina explained how GIS software had been used to process satellite imagery in order to produce a map of this intricacy; including its detailed insets showing oil, mineral deposits, and carbon density. The map also features an attractive street plan of the nation’s capital, Georgetown.

Administrative map of Guyana (2024), H10 (143)

The Bodleian already holds a substantial collection of maps of Guyana, particularly from the British colonial era which officially lasted from 1831 until independence in 1966. The area had previously been in Dutch hands since 1627, with the exception of short-lived periods of French and British occupation. As a result, our collection also includes French and Dutch maps of the region from the late 18th and early 19th centuries; each map a window on the various attempts to understand and control these northern shores of South America. The 1803 British occupation of the Dutch Colony of Berbice (Kolonie Berbice) proved to be longer-lasting, ultimately leading to the formal establishment of British Guiana.

We were happy to show Christina a sample of these European maps, including this Dutch map from 1802, the final year before British occupation. The map shows land holdings along the Berbice River, and features an imaginative cartouche depicting the region’s flora and fauna, perhaps with some artistic license. Christina noted that the cadastral land numbering system still remains in use today and that, with the exception of a few variations in spelling, many of the place names included on the map remain unchanged.

Karte van de Colonie de Berbice gelegen in Bats. Guiana in America (1802), (E) H10:2 (3)

Christina’s new map becomes the most recent addition to this cartographic timeline of Guyanese history; distinctive in its presentation of the nation through local eyes, rather than from a European perspective. In an era when Guyana’s natural resource management and relations with its South American neighbours are high priorities, the role of maps in understanding and administering territory remains crucially important.

The Summer Solstice

A short blog to mark a long day.

A curved line is a beautiful thing. Especially when it is both convex and concave, inward and outward, especially when it shows something as magical as the journey of the Sun across the Earth. This path is called the ecliptic. Today is the Summer Solstice*, the day of the longest amount of sunlight for those in the Northern Hemisphere. We blogged, here , about the Spring equinox, using a beautiful Dutch double hemisphere map of the World from an atlas by Claes Janszoon Visscher. In that blog we highlighted the straight line of the Equator, crossed by the Sun twice in a year to give us the Spring and Autumn equinoxes, days of equal day and night.

Planisphærium Terrestre sive Terrarum Orbis…from Atlas Minor by Claes Janszoon Visscher, c1705. Map Res. 85

Here we follow the curved line, showing the Sun’s journey through the Heavens, the ecliptic. When the Sun is at its most northern point, today, it reaches the Tropic of Cancer, and marks our Summer Solstice. It’s both obvious and amazing that it’s not the Sun though making this curved journey. The Sun stays where it is within the Solar System, even though, along with all the other objects in the Solar System we’re travelling at 450,000 miles per hour around the Milky Way. It’s the Earth that moves, tilting on it’s axis throughout the year and it’s this variation of tilt towards the Sun that produces this curved path in relation to the Earth, and from this our seasons.

Here’s a diagram from a 1909 edition of ‘Bacon’s popular atlas of the World’, showing the workings of the Solar System. ‘Astronomical diagrams’ shows not only the seasons but also a diagram showing the difference in the spread of the Sun’s rays at the two solstices, a concentrated 15° on June 21st (or 20th in this year) and a wider and hence weaker 28° a the winter solstice. Surely this though depends on whereabouts on the Earth you are?

Bacon’s popular atlas of the World, 1909. G1.B1.52

Bacon’s atlas uses the Patent thumb-index, which the publisher claims has been ‘invented specially for this work’. Along the right-hand edge of the atlas the margin gradually gets cut away as you journey through the atlas. This allows you, with a sliding motion up with your thumb, to open up the atlas at any of the general maps you want, Africa for instance, and from there see a list of maps of Africa and the countries therein, followed by the country maps of that area. Bacon promises, ‘This important improvement, it will be seen, has thus been effected without disfiguring the edge of the book’. Probably helps here to have reasonable finger-nails.

*This year’s solstice is the earliest since 1796. It’s because 2024 is a leap year, which means the solstice is 18 hours earlier than in a non-leap year. That it’s as early as it is is due to some complex maths based on how the Georgian calendar tries to fit in leap years over the course of centuries.