It's all books at the moment round here. This is an amazing one: Cartographies of Time is a study of timelines throughout history; it's about the graphic representation of time. And it's lavishly illustrated with loads of great examples. There's some astonishing examples from surprising times. The big image above, for example, is from 1828: Edward Quin's An Historical Atlas depicts the political world at specific moments in time. He used the rolling back clouds to show how much of the world was known to the West at any one point in history. That's amazing isn't it?
When I first got hold of the book, I thought it would be the relatively modern examples that would have been most impressive. There's not actually many examples of those really; it's actually the older ones that stand out. There are some really surprising examples of distinctly geometric constructions drawn around the 1500s that look at odds with faded pages and ancient texts. Extraordinary stuff.
This is a lovely post, many thanks. I don't know what it is about old maps (and flags), but they really make a strong impression on me. It would be interesting to compare the dates of these maps with the original publication dates of your Penguin Explorers series. (Or is that me being too geeky?)
Posted by: Johnny | 14 May 2010 at 09:54 AM
Looks immense!
Posted by: Luke Tonge | 14 May 2010 at 10:52 AM
Inspiring! Thanks for the post. Old maps and diagrams are wonderful.
Posted by: Brian Taylor | 14 May 2010 at 02:14 PM