Library of Congress Map Collections from 1500's

e03179 writes "A friend of mine stumbled across this site from the US Library of Congress. The website allows users to view maps that go all the way back to the 1500's (like this one of America in 1562). The maps have been converted to digital form (SID format - viewer available here) but are viewable in .GIF form in your browser. I was able to look up my hometown during 1871 and see the church in which I'm getting married. Who thought the LOC could be so 31337?"

Comments

useless unless

[madsenj37]

you are a pirate lost in time

Re:useless unless

[shepd]

Would that be someone who illegally copies DOS?

Maps are sadly out of state

[Anonymous Coward]

These maps aren't very good for directions. For example, the entire state of California is missing, and the United States isn't even recognizable. They may be fine for getting around Europe, but for use in the Americas, well, they're worthless.

Re:Maps are sadly out of state

[drainbamage]

Suggestion.....Turn off the computer....Pick up a history book and realize that maps were around long before mapquest came around.

Re:Maps are sadly out of state

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite obvious maps were around before mapquest... they just weren't very accurate!

Re:Maps are sadly out of state

[Anonymous Coward]

Missed Slashdot immortality by this much! --out of Date-- and you could have been Funny:5

Re:Maps are sadly out of state

[Squareball]

What did you expect? It's government afterall ;)

Re:Maps are sadly out of state

[whereiswaldo]

Think of it this way: if you were a traveller using the map as a guide, would it do the trick? Keep in mind that you would see the world in a similar way as the mapmaker did. Hell of a lot better than NO map!

Do you think our view of the universe is any more accurate than these old maps were? Is it any less helpful in grasping what's out there?

Ok Ok Ok!!!

[thammoud]

So could you please tell me if they included a map for Palestine and Israel so we can settle this once and for all ?

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[MoThugz]

They probably don't... but these sites do:

http://www.mideastweb.org/palmaps.htm
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/pal_maps.htm
http://www.stanford.edu/~bgiddens/maps.htm

Maybe that will help if you're honest with your question and really wanted to know.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Dankling]

obviously you dont get why palestinians and jews are fighting over hat piece of land. its not who had it first, its that both cultures consider that land to be holy and rightfully theirs. The bible says that that piece of land should be the jews. and the jews think that israel is where the first humans once walked. The palestinians have holy mosques that they worshit at that are on the same piece of land. And they are both too stubborn to share!

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Chris Burke]

We only barely tolerate their unwashed stench becasue they have oil.

What?! When did Linux geeks get oil, and where's my share?!

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Wyatt Earp]

The Palestinians also have Druze, and Bedouin and a good number of Christians.

The Israeli Defense Forces also have Muslims, Druze, Circassians, and Bedouins.

The founder of the Marxist Front for the Liberation of Palestine was Greek Orthodox.

Many complain about the US support for Israel, and it's uncommon to hear any complain about the Soviet support and training of Black September and Abu Nidal Faction at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow or the Stasi training ceters in East Germany.

The man that founded Islamic Jihad spent most of the Second World War as a guest of Hitler in Berlin, and helped the recruiting of Bosnia Muslems for the foreign units in the SS and Wermacht.

Don't forget that Christians have a serious interest in Israel/Jordan/Sinai as well.

It's not a black and white situation over there.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

linux geeks have plenty of oil, but it's difficult to extract from their hair.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Dankling]

and a good number of Christians.

huh? last time i checked most Americans were Christians, and last time i checked America is giving billions of dollars to Israeli's each year.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[cscx]

Here's one.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[fr2asbury]

huh? last time i checked most Americans were Christians, and last time i checked America is giving billions of dollars to Israeli's each year.

Yeah, but, these are of the same Christians that were slaughtered by the European crusaders, partly because the silly Europeans didn't realize that Christians in other parts of the world might look different than Europeans. Doubly ironic when about the turn of the 1st to 2nd millenium there were more Christians in China than people in Europe.
Mind you since those crusades, the general Christian populace has seemed less intent on reclaiming that part of the world and has settled on making holy sites out of Rome and England (Thank you William Blake).

Cheers

Jonathan

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[packeteer]

Actually most Americans aren't christain. The biggest group of on religion is Christain but they are less than 50%. The thing about it this is that our culture and govt. are very christain like so people assume are are christain.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[xingix]

Most Americans? Last time I checked that figure was more around 3-5%.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Many complain about the US support for Israel, and it's uncommon to hear any complain about the Soviet support and training of Black September and Abu Nidal Faction at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow or the Stasi training ceters in East Germany.

Maybe it's because they aren't around anymore to train anymore people and there are new things to complain about. Besides, I think most people complained about the Soviets in general while they were around.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Wyatt Earp]

According to CIA World Fact Book -

Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10%

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

of course

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/gmd: @F ILREQ(@field(SUBJ+@band(Israel+))+@FIELD(COLLID+gn rlmap))

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and we know the CIA is never wrong...

*cough* Bay of Pigs*

Fact of the matter is, for most people they mark the Christian box even though they dont go to church, have no interest in Christianity, in fact a good degree that say they are Christian disdain anything of the sort. Rather funny, but sad.

I'd say the number of actual Christians are well less than 30%. The rest are people who call themselves that because it feels good, or because their parents were, or whatever.

The numbers are wrong obviously.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you have documentation from reliable sources for your assertions. I'd love to see it.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an Arab minority who are Israeli citizens, but Israel being officially a Jewish state, the Arabs
don't have the same rights as others - at least that is my impression. They can, however, vote and contest for office. Their standard of living is also better than Palestinians in occupied areas. Also very many palestinians are Christians; Arafat's wife is a christian. That is why for most part Palestinian struggle has been secular, not Islamic. Of course some groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are exception.

I don't know as to who was Islamic Jihad's founder was, and if did visit Hitler. I doubt it if the
current Islamic jihad was founded so long ago. A lot of these things are just propaganda. There could have been a part with the word "jihad" as part of its name. After all the word was not invented recently; the concept is from the very beginning of Islam.

People who were leading freedom struggles in colonized countries, often did look to Germany and Japan for help those days. An Indian leader of those days named Bose founded a party called Indian National Front or some such thing, and he along with his followers went to Japan to seek help, and probably also got it in the early 1940's. He is revered as a hero in India.

Re:Ok Ok Ok!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the CIA has been quite, well, moronic in the past doesn't mean it doesn't have access to every American's census records.

GIF Format?

[Monkelectric]

I guess the hadn't discovered more then 256 colors in the 1500's

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they didn't have patent issues to deal with then, either. Give me PNG or give me death.

Re:GIF Format?

[falzer]

Yep. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930's, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.

Re:GIF Format?

[ozbird]

I guess the hadn't discovered more then 256 colors in the 1500's.

They're maps - you only need four colours...

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the fourth color for?

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

A major topic in the field of topology is the Four Color Conjecture, which states that you need only four colors to ensure that no two adjaced regions on a political map have the same color, regardless of their shape or number, except for regions that meet at a single point.

More info.

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohhh, I was thinking land/water/border, but that makes sense.

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't steal from Calvin and Hobbes!!!

Re:GIF Format?

[Monkelectric]

I never understood that one ... couldn't I tile pentagons and break the therom ?

Re:GIF Format?

[lommer]

No, you can't. This is because a tile on one side of a pentagon can be the same colour as a tile on the other side, because they don't touch each other...

Why don't you try it out on a piece of paper...

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

couldn't I tile pentagons and break the therom ?

Nope. Try it. Although each pentagon is bounded by five other pentagons, you don't need to assign a unique color to all six. The reason is that no more than three pentagons share a common vertex.

Re:GIF Format?

[lommer]

This only doesn't work when you have empires. For example, An empire can have a center, and then a number of colonies around the globe. If you wanted to draw all of these colonies in the same colour as your empire you could need more than 4 colours...

o, and btw, even if 4 countries meet at a single point, the 4 colour conjecture is still valid because though two opposite countries technically border each other, for all practical intents and purposes they can be the same colour.

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I won't do it again.

You're welcome.

Re:GIF Format?

[falzer]

> Don't steal from Calvin and Hobbes!!!

I intentionally left out the source. I was hoping that someone would get the joke. You don't jump down people's throats for quoting The Simpsons without a reference, do you?

Re:GIF Format?

[bleckywelcky]

Woot! Calvin and Hobbes. Never thought I would see references to C&H in slashdot comments. I spent my whole childhood reading every C&H comic, and then starting over once I started running out of newer material. And they weren't just comics for fun, they provided interesting perspectives on a lot of social and moral issues. Although, I didn't understand quite a few of the references since I started reading them when I was 9 or so. Oh yeh, Hobbes is my favorite, and it annoys me how everyone thinks Calvin is just some piss head kid that is mad at everyone (ie Calvin peeing on [insert any car manufacturer here] stickers and Calvin peeing on [insert anything else you might not like here] stickers). Calvin is nothing like that at all. Wonder if Bill W had any say in that sort of usage of a pic of Calvin, I can't imagine him letting it slide, had to be whatever company owned him/C&H/the books at the time.

Oh yeh, at the previous college I attended, somebody had taken an old Dodge caravan (probably 1990 or 1991) and painted some C&H stuff on it. They had 2 or 3 actually comics painted on there (blown up to proportions to fit on the sides/back) and had the C&H title painted on there. I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I saw it. Shoulda taken some pics cause it was on campus every couple weeks or so.

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you such a moron?

Re:GIF Format?

[Kaeru the Frog]

I don't understand either. With a map of hexes, each hex is adjacent to six others. Wouldn't you need seven colors?

Re:GIF Format?

[whovian]

Yup, that. The move The Wizard of Oz (1939) marks the beginning, I believe. It was the first film ever to use Technicolor.

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wanted to pretend that I was in the know! Please do not hurt me!

Re:GIF Format?

[azcoffeehabit]

But luckily they have ted turner, now those people can finally enjoy full-color real life too!

Re:GIF Format?

[khuber]

Never thought I would see references to C&H in slashdot comments.

Errr...yeah, Calvin & Hobbes is about as obscure as Garfield.

-Kevin

Re:GIF Format?

[khuber]

No it wasn't. And there were hand colored movies around 1900.

-Kevin

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now then, is Ted Turner stupid enough to colorize the opening scene of The Wizard of Oz?

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill W. only licensed book collections and calendars. He refused to let them license T-shirts or other stuff, even after his publishers brought him dozens of bootleg C&H shirts. All those peeing Calvins and any T-shirts you see are bootleg.

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. While a given hex has six neighbors, the neighbors themselves do not all touch. IOW, given hex X is red, the hexes directly to the left and directly to the right could both be blue, because they do not touch.

Re:GIF Format?

[F452]

I haven't done any surveys on this, but I think anyone over the age of 12 knows about the real Calvin and Hobbes, not the Calvin portrayed on those idiotic decals.

"Yep. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930's, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too"

Why do I hear Clark Griswald saying this?

Still, pretty funny.

Re:GIF Format?

[blibbleblobble]

"A major topic in the field of topology is the Four Color Conjecture, which states that you need only four colors to ensure that no two adjaced regions on a political map have the same color, regardless of their shape or number, except for regions that meet at a single point."

Maps have 5 colours; one is reserved for water

Re:GIF Format?

[Anonymous Coward]

256 colours ought to be enough for anyone.

Re:GIF Format?

[jovlinger]

> Wonder if Bill W had any say in that sort of usage of a pic of Calvin

C&W were _never_ licenced for any merchanise. Anytime you see a calvin T-Shirt (*sniff* I still have mine) or sticker, it's a copyright infringement. BW resisted the truckloads of money this would bring in, as it would compromise the magical world that Calvin lives in.

BW is an artist of great integrity, and suspect his reclusiveness after the end of C&H (I mean, it's been how many years?) is mostly due to disgust with the publishing industry. But this is pure speculation on my part.

As for the pissing calvin stickers, I assume that the picture of a spiky-haired boy is generic enough to not warrant action by the publishers, or else that action is unlike the "real" calvin enough to be protected as satirical use of calvin's reputation.

Re:GIF Format?

[jmd!]

Slashdot mauled the first copy. This site is a fucking joke.

-------

What about a continent with five contries:

+vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv+
1 1 1
+vvvvvv+vvvvvvvvvvvv+
1 2 1 1
+vvvvvv+ X 1
1 3 1 1 ones used in place of pipe due to lameness filter
+vvvvvv+vvvvvvvvvvvv+ v used in place of dash due to lameness filter
1 4 1
+vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv+

What color do you suggest for the country labeled "X"?

HOW IRONIC IS IT SLASHDOT'S "LAMENESS FILTER" IS ITSELF INDESCRIBABLY LAME?

Re:GIF Format?

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Change region 3 to color 1, and then use color 3 for region X.

really mature

[Skuld-Chan]

Imagine my shock when I go to a page full of hairy guys carrying signs says "burn all gifs" are you trying to get me fired? That stuff is nasty.

I clicked on the gif link because I'm not sure what a sid file is. I always thought they were those c64 tunes)

500 years?

[Trusty Penfold]

Contentental drift will have moved things around since these maps were drawn, it will be impossible to recognise features now.

Shame, I like maps.

Re:500 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have bigger problems... like the maps weren't even accurate when they were drawn. They didn't exactly have GPS back then. Continental drift in 500 years wouldn't be THAT great anyway.

Re:500 years?

[strictnein]

people really need to learn to pick up on sarcasm...

Re:500 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Other people need to learn to be funnier.

Re:500 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Global Warming will have caused sea levels to rise by 500 feet

Re:500 years?

[doi]

Yeah, I noticed that all those dragons that used to be in the middle of the Atlantic are nowhere near there anymore.

Re:500 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you hunt animals to the point of extinction.

Re:500 years?

[Myco]

No, the parent was right -- this is Slashdot, after all. Recognizing lame jokes is a vital survival skill around here.

Re:500 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they've moved to Iraq.

Re:500 years?

[blibbleblobble]

I noticed that all those dragons that used to be in the middle of the Atlantic are nowhere near there anymore.

They've been moved to iraq: just wait for the next set of atlases to come out.

p.s. what's the plural of atlas?

Re:500 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

p.s. what's the plural of atlas?

If you're speeking English, it's "atlases".
If you're speaking l33t-pseud0-la7in-geek-speek, it's "atlii". Or something stupid sounding, anyway.

W00t!!!!!

[fotoLilith]

Man, I've been using the LOC to cop photos for projects for years.. 1337est library on earth!

SVG?

[doorbot.com]

Why aren't there SVG versions available? Icons are great in SVG, but one area where SVG can really strut it's stuff is maps.

Re:SVG?

[Trusty Penfold]

The SVG format hadn't been ratified 500 years ago, so some of the files would probably be unreadable in modern browsers.

Re:SVG?

[delta407]

The maps are digitized from their original, hard-copy form. That produces a raster image, and it would be entirely useless to attempt to make an inaccurate vector represenetation of it.

Re:SVG?

[0x0d0a]

You're mostly right, though the raster image is of limited resolution, and it isn't inconceivable that an extremely high-resolution scan coupled with vectorization could yield more useful data than a low res raster image.

Librarians

[ccarr.com]

Who thought the LOC could be so 31337?"

Actually, librarians were one of the earlier professions outside of the hard sciences to "get" computers.

Re:Librarians

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is 31337 ??

Re:Librarians

[cpeterso]

31337 = "eleet" = elite

Re:Librarians

[srichman]

Actually, librarians were one of the earlier professions outside of the hard sciences to "get" computers.

Yeah, turns out librarians have to deal with all sorts of nerdy stuff. Who woulda known....

Re:Librarians

[Ratbert42]

Georgia Tech's computer science program grew out of library science. It was the School of Information in 1963, then became the School of Information and Computer Science in 1972. (Now it's the College of Computing.) When I started there they were just phasing out a required library course.

theifs!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they respect the copyrights on those documents! Remember, sharing is stealing!

Re:theifs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you're an ac, this is Score:5 Funny!

Re:theifs!

[Myco]

Kindergarten LIED to me! And, uh... CURSE YOU, SESAME STREET!

Re:theifs!

[DunbarTheInept]

A lot of these maps were comissioned BY the library of Congress.

Burn all gifs?

[moosesocks]

I don't understand the constant hypocracy taking place at slashdot. When asking taco why he uses .GIFs for all of the graphics on slashdot, as the majority of the ./ crowd favors PNGs over GIFs for numerous reasons, he told me not to confuse HIS interests with the interests of the readers. Hmmph

Re:Burn all gifs?

[Anonymous Coward]

His interests must include using more bandwidth, since that's what he's doing. 99.9% of graphical browsers can do PNG8, so there really is no reason for anyone to use GIF.

And those of using l33t advanced browsers like Mozilla (or Opera) can enjoy PNG24's in their full glory without any crazy hacks (cough*IE*cough).

Re:Burn all gifs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has /. paid the devil
Or will we see:
News Item: UNISYS sues Slashdot.

Re:Burn all gifs?

[0x0d0a]

From what I've heard, slightly earlier versions of IE on Windows had semi-cruddy PNG support. Even ignoring problems with support for things like alpha, they render more slowly than other image types.

Re:Burn all gifs?

[cthugha]

From what I've heard, slightly earlier versions of IE on Windows had semi-cruddy PNG support.

All right, hands up everybody who uses old (and therefore, with security holes big enough to peg a rock through) versions of IE.

What, no one? How surprising, considering how tolerant and understanding /.ers are on these issues. :)

Re:Burn all gifs?

[blibbleblobble]

"When asking taco why he uses .GIFs for all of the graphics on slashdot"

We don't care: we've all blocked images.slashdot.com to stop the adverts.

More old maps

[tedDancin]

I came across some more old maps the other day, quite a few from the 1500's.

Re:More old maps

[Vengie]

Let me just tell you -- these are so much more amazing in real life. Come to Beinicke and visit =)

Related Link...

[TheGreenGoogler]

Great site for maps from the present time found here... Includes printable maps, trails, atlas info, etc...

burn all gifs

[sfraggle]

Kind of ironic how slashdot links to burnallgifs.org while practically every image on here is in gif format as well..

Re:burn all gifs

[LeapingGnomeArs]

Looks to me like the submitter linked to the site, not Slashdot.

Re:burn all gifs

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of ironic how many off-topic clones of an off-topic post magically appear after the first off-topic rant.

Re:Burn All GIFS

[Skuld-Chan]

no duh. You know what else is patented? Try the way your cursor goes to the next line when you hit return - seriously

Let me know you need help burning your return key.

Re:Burn All GIFS

[khuber]

But Unisys actually requires a license. Assholes.

http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw/

-Kevin

Re:Burn All GIFS

[lemkebeth]

And they can't enforce it. :grins:

It was filed in 1983 and granted in December of 1985 so, we have a bit over a decade until it expires.

You will notice Unisys claims they can apply it to viewers so, that would apply to lots of things. Thus it isn't enforceable at all.

Re:Burn All GIFS

[subsolar2]

It was filed in 1983 and granted in December of 1985 so, we have a bit over a decade until it expires.

Actually at that time patents lasted 17 years after they were granted, this year is the last year for the patent I believe. Though it could be 2003 is the last year since I cant remember when the rule 20year from filing or 17 years from granting went into effect. This was done to "rationalize" our patents to the EU time period.

Re:Burn All GIFS

[lemkebeth]

I must have misremembered.

My memory said 30 years.

looking for information on SID format?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get a player here.

HA HA HA fooled U!

MrSID viewer?

[Quixote]

The viewer requires registration. If a site requires registration to give out its "free" product, then I don't consider it 'free' anymore. Anyone have any other viewers for MrSID?

Re:MrSID viewer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Works on Mozilla 1.2b in Windows with no download of this plugin. Don't know if it ships with mozilla or I got it from somewhere else (WMP 7, & QT6 are installed too, maybe it came from there).

Re:MrSID viewer?

[NeuroManson]

Oddly enough, I haven't had any problem using (shudder) IE 6 to view the maps in question, without any third party apps... Yah yah yah, Micro$oft bad and all, it still does the job, despite their detonating Pintos and supporting the nazi vermacht, I don't see any of you bombing Fords either... (okay, it's OT but it's still my view, if you don't like MS' products, then don't complain about having to pay for others)

Re:MrSID viewer?

[wssddc]

For Win32, Irfanview will view .sid files. http://www.irfanview.com/ Get the plugins as well as the program.

Re:MrSID viewer?

[AvitarX]

yeah, I wonder when they will realize that jackoff poopybutt isn't a real person?

or that fuck.off@spam.address.lookers.com is a fake address?

Heaven forbid I register.

Re:MrSID viewer?

[Anonymous Coward]

My fear is an attempt to track down Mr. Stu Gotts.

Re:MrSID viewer?

[vonWoland]

Well, don't bother registering, or downloading. The viewer is broken: you can look at your sid file, even zoom in on it, but can't zoom-out, pan, et c. which makes for a frustrating experiance. The reason that you can't do these things is that the menues won't let you select anything. I think it uses Motif or something, but in any event looks pretty crappy. I tried looking through the documentation, but there was little to none suppied with the package, and the web site only seemd to deal with licensing issues. Of course, no way to look through the source--binary only. I am so glad the Library of Congress is using this seemingly propriatary format---heavens we can't let Linux users run amock with those maps.

Re:MrSID viewer?

[Sinistar2k]

You have a special IE6, then, because mine had no idea what to do with downloaded .sid files.

Are you sure you aren't just seeing the GIFs generated on the Zoom/Resolution page itself?

Re:MrSID viewer?

[NickWFU]

You can snag the plugin here for 32 and Mac if the lizardtech servers are still smoked.

Re:MrSID viewer?

[NeuroManson]

Oh, that might be the case, I thought the links were straight to the .sid files... Doh!

Re:MrSID viewer?

[DunbarTheInept]

The site shows GIFs. The SID files are what you download if you want the full resolution version.

Re:MrSID viewer?

[prnoth]

And the viewer lets you save the file as a tiff, after which in something like photoshop you can do anything with it you want. These are all copyright free, too, as they are basically historical in nature. Great for historians.

MapQuest

[stephenisu]

This must be where MapQuest does all their data mining.... I always wondered why it told me to take so many non-existent roads..

Re:MapQuest

[Transient0]

kind of off-topic.... but funny as hell...

A Mapquest Experience

Batman, where are we?

[jpt.d]

And after batman and robin travelled back in time to the 16th century, carrying with them their printed off map. "According to the {VERY ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF NORTH AMERICA} we should be on land right now, but we are in the middle of the ocean Batman!"

Twilight Zone...

[jaybird144]

My University has vanished! I found a map of Champaign, IL (I go to the U of I there...) ca. 1869 (2 years after the University was supposedly founded) and there's nothing there! The map shows farmland where all of the University buildings are! So, the question is, did the U of I really exist then, or are they just pulling my leg? I want answers!

Re:Twilight Zone...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's okay... my college, which shall remain nameless, is in Washington, DC, and back in 1996, on their website, they had a doctored photo of the university quad with the Washington Monument in the background. Besides the fact we're miles away and it's not visibile... they put it on the wrong side!

Re:Twilight Zone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, we were wondering when you'd ask about that. There there, don't try and escape, the chains are tight, and there are armed guards all around.

You see, your entire "college" was actually just built 3 weeks ago. Your classmates and friends (and yes, even that cute chick you just met) are all paid agents of our organization.

We tried to conceal everything from you, and we were succeeding.. but DAMN the the infernal Library of Congress!! The ONLY government department were we don't have high-level implants. Who would suspect them? But now you know our secret. In the future we will be sure ALL parts of government are fully managed by our agents.

Ah, yes, why am I telling you this? Because we're putting the finishing touches on a NEW college for you. Rest assured, we have learned from our mistakes. There will be NO maps accessible from your network terminal, and the stone will fool even the most sophisticated carbon dating. This time, we've decided not to use a "cute chick" agent. In fact I personally decided to implant you with a homosexual persona. I think you'll enjoy it! Your new name will be "Brad" (doesn't it just scream "FAG"?) and you're majoring in Computer Science again (and of course, you must, in order for our plans to succeed).

Anyway, tonight after you fall asleep, the Mind Eraser beam will make you forget everything I've just told you.

Tomorrow you will begin your new life!! And our evil plans will remain intact!

MWAH HA HA HA HA HA H- *cough* *cough* (Sorry, still working on the evil laugh).

Re:Twilight Zone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you aren't exactly going to Find the DCL on the map, but U of I is on there as Illinois State Industrial University. Right hand center on the map. The only building on campus at that point is where Beckman is now, at the corner of Wright and University.

Re:Twilight Zone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at the bottom right corner, you'll see an inset called "Illinois State Industrial University", which was only founded 2 years before this map was published.

Re:Twilight Zone...

[shogun]

Well it might not of actually been physically located in the same location when it was founded. My univerity (yes a relatively recent one) was actually based somewhere in the city in a temporary location while the campus was initially being contructed for a couple of years.

Re:Twilight Zone...

[NeuralAbyss]

This is worrying.. seeing someone from Shafted (especially an admin! aagh!) posting on Slashdot.. I mean, seriously.. tech people using the net for serious discussion?

Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a....

[sakeneko]

D*mn. I looked for Arlington, Texas -- found Arlington, Virginia and one or two others, but no cute little town become overgrown suburb of Dallas. I looked for El Paso, Texas -- found El Paso, Illinois, but no West Texas town of country music fame and my childhood.... I guess someone doesn't like Texas. (Or maybe just can't stand Kinky Friedman?) ;>

Re:Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a....

[stwrtpj]

Wow, you mean Texas actually wasn't the center of the world back then? What a horrible unenlightened time that was. No wonder the map scale is not in Standard Texas Units.

Re:Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you mean Texas actually wasn't the center of the world back then? What a horrible unenlightened time that was. No wonder the map scale is not in Standard Texas Units.

Who is Tex, and how did he get a state named after his butt anyway?

Olde Maps

[ackthpt]

I've been able to pick up some 1800's maps on ebay of the world, as it was known even then it's pretty cool to see how they thought the world fit together.

Oh, and thanks for the red herring link to the burn all gifs website, keep your politics to yourself or at least warn that it's not to LOC gif images.

Re:Olde Maps

[jc42]

... link to the burn all gifs website, keep your politics to yourself ...

Politics? The issue with GIF is the legal threat from the owner of the format. This hardly qualifies as a political issue. Well, I suppose one could argue that since the copyright and patent laws were set up by politicians, it qualifies a political. But that reduces the term to meaninglessness.

At least in the US, you don't have the legal right to create GIFs without the explicit written permission of the owner of the format. The owner has made legal threats against some users. So migrating away to a similar (but unencumbered) format is only prudent.

Re:Olde Maps

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll assume that's for those who don't know about it. I'm well aware and use jpeg or tiff for everything. :-)

Anyone figure out how to zoom in?

[TrevorB]

Anyone figure out how to get the full zoomed in version of a map? Zooming in on a screen size version is nice, but is there a way to get the whole image at full resolution?

Re:Anyone figure out how to zoom in?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could click the Full Image link, but it would do nothing so I wouldn't bother.

Re:Anyone figure out how to zoom in?

[jpt.d]

In chimera I selected what I wanted then pressed enter when the focus was still on the option box.

Re:Anyone figure out how to zoom in?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, well I'd be the fuckwit without chimera then wouldn't I.[Hides with embarrassment]

Re:Anyone figure out how to zoom in?

[Anonymous Coward]

chi what? Can I get that on my wap browser?

Re:Anyone figure out how to zoom in?

[Anonymous Coward]

try moving your face closer to the screen .. works for me!

.SID format

[strredwolf]

MrSID format is fairly intelligent. I had the pleasure of working with some Perl code which impliments the UI, and calls a compiled program to shove out the .GIF. Ported a good chunk to PHP, streamlined it a bit, and did some overlay magic on it.

Re:.SID format

[Anonymous Coward]

Go on, go on! What happened after the overlay magic?

Mod! Mod!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod! Mod!

Who thought the LOC could be so 31337?

[the eric conspiracy]

Surely you jest. LIbraries are the oldest and ultimate repository of geek-ness. WHat could be more 31337.

Interestingly, the world's first library just reopened a couple of days ago.

Or you could visit this extraordinary place.

Re:Who thought the LOC could be so 31337?

[Anonymous Coward]

how can the world's first library be in alexandria? wtf do you think alexander was conquering? BABYLONIA.

Re:Who thought the LOC could be so 31337?

[abhinavnath]

There is a library that predates Alexandria at what used to be the University of Nalanda, near Pataliputra (Patna) in India. This library existed centruies before the Buddha and Mahavira. I highly recommend a visit, if for some strange reason you happen to be vacationing in Bihar.

I'll tell you...

[Qwerpafw]

Who thought the LOC could be so 31337?

Neal Stephenson?

Think back to SnowCrash, that piece of geek required reading...

(for the uninitiated, the Protagonist of SnowCrash is a uber-hacker of sorts who freelances doing data mining for the library of congress. He also delivers pizza for the Mafia, or did until he crashed his car.)

Re:I'll tell you...

[drinkypoo]

The uninitiated? I thought you were required to read snow crash, diamond age, and cryptonomicon before they let you have an account on this thing.

Re:I'll tell you...

[mwgjordan]

Stephenson had the Library of Congress merge with the CIA, then lose government funding, to become am uber clearing house for information.

You missed the disclaimer

[User 956]

These maps aren't very good for directions. For example, the entire state of California is missing, and the United States isn't even recognizable.

I guess you must have missed the disclaimer: "When using this map, it's a good idea to do a reality check and make sure the road still exists, watch out for construction, and follow all traffic safety precautions. This map is only to be used as an aid in planning."

Interesting comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Size of Slashdot's logo (title.gif): 3473 bytes
Size of Slashdot's logo as a PNG: 2558 bytes
Savings of 915 bytes

That's a savings of nearly a gig per million downloads. Imagine the savings when you do all the other graphics on the site, too.

Re:Interesting comparison

[Unordained]

which would be great, if it weren't for the cacheing of those images ... and the fact that this page, right now, by itself (html) is 22k ... ten times the size of the graphic. so by the time you're done converting to png ... you've saved ... hmmmm ... a mega- per peta-byte? go you!

Re:Interesting comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

and the fact that this page, right now, by itself (html) is 22k ... ten times the size of the graphic

Content-encoding: gzip

btw the topic logos are gifs too..

Re:Interesting comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Per million downloads != per million page views. I was quite explicit in saying downloads so as not to include people viewing files in their cache. And, as someone pointed out, there are also topic icons, plus the little bits of page chrome (rounded corners, etc). If they moved to CSS, they'd save even more.

Re:Interesting comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

And bandwidth could be drastically reduced by saying 'Screw Netscape 4 and the horse it rode in on, we're using CSS instead of these hideous tables!'

Re:Interesting comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this, and can say it as a long time Netscape 4 user. Mozilla is here, Mozilla is great, and there's no reason anyone on Earth should continue to use Netscape 4. The sooner it's gone, the happier we'll all be.

Re:Interesting comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdots' front page contains 31,112 bytes worth of GIFs. Converted to PNG, the images would total 26,780 bytes. That's 4.1MB of savings for every thousand hits.

Theodore!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame on you! Now go sit in the corner until you acquire a sense of humor!

Another interesting collection of old maps...

[GeoMapper]

in modern formats (i.e., not paper) is at http://www.davidrumsey.com/

I love old maps on weekends; by day, I love modern spatial datasets at the large earth-science agency at which I work (OK, it's a part of the Dept. of Injustice as referenced in a recent /. article on the 100% M$ solution. My team is about 50% Mac, 40% Win, 10% *nix - but that's OT).

Maps can be considered a superset of the relational/OO database; x, y, z and t have special properties (try indexing on x and y). If you'd like to learn more of this facinating topic, do the usual searches but be sure to include GIS (geographic information system, not guessing is simpler, as some have suggested).

Cheers from a first-poster. /. is great!

Re:Another interesting collection of old maps...

[Anonymous Coward]

"http://www.davidrumsey.com/"
Sorry, your browser or operating system is not supported by Insight. Due to Insight's complexity, it is only possible to create a valuable user experience in one of the following browsers and platforms.

blah blah

basically doesn't work with Opera 6.0 'cause it's based on iron age technology. And you need a plus 3 score on your operating system.

Hey, I can see the smoting of Smaug

[Anonymous Coward]

It's right there in the middle.

Sig not quite right

[A nonymous Coward]

Should be:

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Full size gifs available

[Chris Pimlott]

I found this page the other week (while trying to settle an argument over some street names) and I found you can get the entire full-resolution maps in gif - with a little hackery. Go to a map and set it at the smallest zoom. Now look at the image location - yep, it's CGI generated and right in the query are the position, width and height. A little trial and error and you can get the entire map out as a single gif.

Re:Full size gifs available

[XorNand]

A 1024x768 image of the map of the Americas, mentioned in the submission: Click Here.

Re:Full size gifs available

[BoBG]

if you set res=1 you get was appears to be a 'full zoom' as close as the script will show to the captured resolution....it also chokes if you give it dimensions which are too large, 4096x3072 no worky. =[

Re:Full size gifs available

[agdv]

1024x768?
Whoa, who would have thought that *VGA resolutions and the 4:3 aspect ratio are that old!

But...

[Cyno01]

How many of these map collections could fit on the head of a pin?

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on how many cylinders the head has...

America in the 1500's?

[Dankling]

like this one of America in 1562

ehhh, anyone who knows their history knows that America didn't come into existence until 1700's.

Re:America in the 1500's?

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States didn't come into existence until the 1700's, however, America, the two continents, first received that name in 1507.

Re:America in the 1500's?

[evacuate_the_bull]

Not exactly.

America (the landmass) has been inhabited for several thousands of years.

"People" began arriving in America between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago via the Bering Strait.
Columbus arrived here in 1492 as (supposedly) the first European.
Virginia Dare was the first American child born of European parents in 1587.
The Declaration of Independence was finished on July 4, 1776, creating the United States of America

An interesting sorite. When did America come into existance???

Re:America in the 1500's?

[lemkebeth]

When people in the US say American in the 1500's they really mean Colonial America (aka British America).

As in the area of the eastern US before independence.

Re:America in the 1500's?

[Anonymous Coward]

People in the 1500's probably weren't talking much about English colonies there, since the first one was in New Foundland in 1582, and the first one in present day United States was in 1607.

Re:America in the 1500's?

[Anonymous Coward]

British America? What about the Spanish, the French, the Portuguese?

Re:America in the 1500's?

[lemkebeth]

That would be Colonial Brazil/Brasil, Colonial, Mexico, etc.

That is how it is referred to in the US anyway.

Actually there was a colony in the 1500 in the British area of North America but, if my memory is correct failed.

Re:America in the 1500's?

[DunbarTheInept]

ehhh, anyone who knows their history knows that America didn't come into existence until 1700's.

Really? Where did Columbus land in 1492 then?
India?

Re:America in the 1500's?

[mamba-mamba]

Nobody knows for sure where Columbus landed.

But one thing is almost for sure: it wasn't the mainland of what we now call the US.

You can check it out here.

MM
--

Testify - Librarians: We're Not What You Think

[tiltowait]

I found the attitude in this story very odd, considering online map library exhibits have been around many years. What's next, people start discovering LOC's *free* pre-Google answers service?

Get a grip, nerds, librarians are Not What You Think. (draft of a page I made a few months ago especially directed at the slashdot crowd, url published here for the first time ever!). See also a category I build at the ODP, Librarians in Society.

Re:Testify - Librarians: We're Not What You Think

[Chris Pimlott]

I found the attitude in this story very odd, considering online map library exhibits [google.com] have been around many years.

I can't say I've surveyed a good sample of the online map sites, but the LoC site does stand out for the incredible resolution of the scans.

Re:Testify - Librarians: We're Not What You Think

[jenniferj]

Yeah. Thwart not the librarian:

"Ok, sure. We've all got our little preconceived notions about what librarians are and what they do. Many people think of them as diminutive civil servants, scuttling about "Sssh-ing" people and stamping things. Well, think again buster.

Librarians have degrees. They go to graduate school for Information Science and become masters of data systems and human/computer interaction. Librarians can catalog anything from an onion to a dog's ear. They could catalog you. Librarians wield unfathomable power. With a flip of the wrist they can hide your dissertation behind piles of old Field and Stream magazines. They can find data for your term paper that you never knew existed. They may even point you toward new and appropriate subject headings.

People become librarians because they know too much. Their knowledge extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines. Librarians are all-knowing and all-seeing. They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses. They preserve every aspect of human knowledge. Librarians rule. And they will kick the crap out of anyone who says otherwise."

Re:Testify - Librarians: We're Not What You Think

[blibbleblobble]

# THX is the name of a sound system

I think it's actually a certification for sound-systems. It's mostly been dropped now, as people realise they don't need to pay Lucas to certify them.

Re:Testify - Librarians: We're Not What You Think

[jenniferj]

Forgot to add the link... above quote belongs to librarianavengers.com.

Re:Does it clearly show the areas stolen by the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much every piece of land on the planet has been conquered by someone at some point in history. Get over it.

These maps are cool but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use MapPoint 2002.

You may also be intrested in...

[circusnews]

This is the my current listing of extext and related projects. Some have photographic studies of old text, photos and maps, others are standard text or marked up text.

I appoligize in advance for the format, but I format this correctly it gets rejected as having too few charictors per line.

The Humanities Text Initiative: www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/p/pd-modeng/pd-modeng-idx, The Internet Sacred Text Archive: www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm,

The Bralyn E-text Archive: www.bralyn.net/etext/, The Early Canadiana Online Archive: www.canadiana.org/cgi-bin/ECO/mtq, The Canada

Digital Collection: collections.ic.gc.ca/, The Online Book Page at the U. of Penn.: onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/,

A Celibration of Women Writers project at the U. of Penn.: digital.library.upenn.edu/women/, The Litrix Reading Room archive: www.litrix.com/,

National Library of Canada Online Etexts: collection.nlc-bnc.ca/e-coll-e/inet-loc-e.htm, The Oxford Text Archive United Kingdom Archive: ota.ahds.ac.uk/index.html,

Jennifer L. Armstrong's Free Online Novels archive: www.free-online-novels.com/, The U. of Calgary Online Children's Stories: www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html,

The Best Children's Literature On The Net project: www.geocities.com/Paris/Jardin/1630/index.html, The Christian Classics Ethereal Library: www.ccel.org/,

The Free Online Inspirational Books Archive: www.inspirationalmedia.com/eBooks.htm, The Internet Christian Library Project: www.iclnet.org/,

The Online Library of Literature: www.literature.org/, Arthur's Classic Novels Archive: members.fortunecity.com/wendover/index.html,

The Bibliomania Archive: www.bibliomania.com/, The Bygosh.com etext archive: bygosh.com/index.html,

The Electronic Literature Foundation: elf.chaoscafe.com/elf_by_Author.htm, The Internet Classics Archive at MIT: classics.mit.edu/,

Project Gutenberg: www.promo.net/pg, The Online Book Initiative: ftp.std.com/OBI,

The Internet Wiretap Project (used to be wiretap.spies.com): wiretap.area.com, The U. of Virginia etext project and sub projects: etext.lib.virginia.edu,

The Chinese Philosophical Etext Archives: angle.web.wesleyan.edu/etext/, The NetLibrary Etext Archive: netlibrary.net,

The johannesen.com collection: www.johannesen.com/OnlineGMD.htm, The Internet Public Library (indexes many other repositories as well): www.ipl.org,

Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts (American & English lit as well as Western philosophy): www.infomotions.com/alex/, The University of Texas at Austin online collection: www.lib.utexas.edu/books/booksut.html,

The English Server (and its various subprojects): eserver.org/fiction/, The Making of America project at the U. of Mich.: moa.umdl.umich.edu/index.html,

The University of Chicago Library (3 collections): www.lib.uchicago.edu/eos/html/ www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/ets/efts/ and www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/newhome/texts/,

The SunSite (UC berkley) collection: sunsite.berkeley.edu/Collections/, The Library Of Congress's various projects: www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html,

The Bartleby collection: www.bartleby.com/, The Bielefeld University Library (Germany): www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/english/,

The Camelot Project: www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cphome.stm, The Blake Digital Text Project: virtual.park.uga.edu/wblake/home1.html,

The Schoenberg Project: www.library.upenn.edu/etext/, The Clevland Digital Library: web.ulib.csuohio.edu/SpecColl/cdl/,

The Everglades Digital Library: everglades.fiu.edu/library/index.html, The Historical Text Archive: historicaltextarchive.com/,

The Humanities Text Intitiative (University of Michigan): www.hti.umich.edu/, The University of Virginia etext project and subprojects: etext.virginia.edu/,

The NY Public Library etext project (comming soon): digital.nypl.org/, The Perseus project: www.perseus.tufts.edu/,

The CDC reading library: www.cdc.gov/publications.htm,

The US Army's online libraries: www.adtdl.army.mil/atdls.htm www.dtic.mil/doctrine/ www.libraries.army.mil/ www.tricare.osd.mil/afml/ www.hqda.army.mil/library/ carlisle-www.army.mil/library/,

Marine Corps Publications: www.usmc.mil/marinelink/ind.nsf/publications, The US Air Force e-publishing page: www.e-publishing.af.mil/orgs.asp?type=pubs,

The Thoreau project: www.niulib.niu.edu/thoreau/, The Free Fiction Library: www.free-fiction.com/library/,

The Ancent Greek Literature Project: www.hol.gr/greece/ancwords.htm, The Free Novels Online project at cjb.net: freenovelsonline.cjb.net/,

submissions?

[WhiteChocolate42]

I have a few maps of my hometown that predate the oldest LOC maps of the area (mine are from early 1800s). Does anyone know of a method to submit maps for archival? (I don't really want to give them away, but I would like to see them digitally archived)

Burn All GIFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you understand what the "burn all GIFs" means? I think it's rather important that the poster reminded us that GIF images are still PATENTED by Unisys. Please remember, you should burn all your .gifs too.

Maps Rule!

[Wyatt Earp]

I love maps. Maps rock.

If anyone out there knows if there is a job market out there for geographers or cartographers, email me or post something. I'm in the career change mood.

wyattearp@mac.com

This is an off topic post, I know it, you know it.

how did they know ...

[Raiford]

I guess a cartographer is a cartographer regardless of what era you live in and the explorers also had the spirit of scientists as well. It amazes me that the coastlines of some regions such as Cuba have all the little nooks and crannies included. It amazes me how this was done without the aid of aerial observation. It may not be entirely accurate, but it was a grand attempt.

Re:how did they know ...

[ksuhr]

There was a recent story on NPR about Captain Cook which mentioned that his maps of various expeditions were so accurate that they were being used into the 1990's. I wonder if they were used so recently, why did they stop? did GPS totally ecplipse everything around that time frame? Oh, the stuff about Captain Cook dealt with a book called Blue latitudes if anyone is interested.

Hack the image URL!

[Chris Pimlott]

Zooming in on a screen size version is nice, but is there a way to get the whole image at full resolution?

Hack the image URL. The position and resolution are right in the query. For example, a 1024x768 detail from the New World map.

(I tell ya, our maps suck these days. No dragons, sea serpants, gods, cherubs... all you get are little icons that show you were the nearest Red Roof Inn is)

Re:Hack the image URL!

[Reziac]

I was there a few days ago and found that the "click here for larger image" thing produces the fullsized file. You have to go thru a couple layers of pages for each map to get to it, tho.

And then I had a bit of fun with a fragment of the output and some old atlases from my library .. http://home.earthlink.net/~thesandpit/devil/lake.h tm ('ware the dreaded slashdot split)

works for me

[mattdm]

Hmmm; the maps of Boston seem just about as good for getting around here as any I've seen at a bookstore recently....

Re:works for me

[Ratbert42]

Does it have the Big Dig on it?

Re:It was a bad idea to begin with...

[NamShubCMX]

Also, Rudy, in Cryptonomicon, used to be a librarian before becoming a geek. Actually, having all those books handy and his passion for table RPG are what got him into programming if I remember correctly. (that silly food simulation thing...)

Sid Meier...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm having flashbacks to Sid Meier's Pirates! on the c-64

great game.

ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, someone geeky enough to use the term ``31337'' is getting married... weird stuff.

sig export file sizes

[Carbon Unit 549]

For my hometown map I got the following sizes exported from the sig viewer, then corel.
sig 8 MB
tif 216 MB
tif(lzw compressed) 161 MB
png 185 MB
jpg (high quality) 34 MB

Continental Drift

[LeapingGnomeArs]

Yeah, those two centimeters a year. Oh no, by now those maps are 10 meters off! Now they're worthless!

mrsid viewer on linux and the gui

[drunken monkey]

I downloaded the sid viewer, linux version, but the menus don't work. I'm able to pull down the menus but not able to click or select the options.

Anyone else having such issues?

narbey

Re:mrsid viewer on linux and the gui

[Repugnant_Shit]

Yes, I'm having the same issue. I guess that's not very helpful though :)

Re:mrsid viewer on linux and the gui

[Repugnant_Shit]

Although if you start it with the -i option you can specify a file on the command-line
MrSID -i filename.sid

Re:mrsid viewer on linux and the gui

[drunken monkey]

I got that far, but I want to be able to zoom out again. The cursor default to the zoom-in function but I could not find a keyboard modifier to make it zoom out. And since I could not access the functions in the menus, I was stuck.

narbey

Re:3 is the magic number

[Anonymous Coward]

seems likely to me*!

* threesome: you; right hand; left hand

Re:3 is the magic number

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us know how it goes!

Re:3 is the magic number

[madsenj37]

Then what the hell are you doing on teh computer?

US not created by Declaration of Independence!!

[Anonymous Coward]

dood, you need to take American history again!

The Declaration of Independence was finished on July 4, 1776, creating the United States of America

it was the articles of confederation which created the first USA. The second USA, the one you are thinking of, was created by the Constitution, which was ratified in 1791.

remember when Reagan told the Nicaraguans they were taking too long to form their country? it had only been a few years since their revolution. The 13 state USA took 15 years to create after the revolution.

the bill of rights - void where prohibited!

Re:US not created by Declaration of Independence!!

[Anonymous Coward]

But things move so much faster these days. A country should be able to topple its dictator at 9am, and have a full fledge working democracy with elections and all the bells and whistles by noon.

Re:Technicolor

[Alien54]

Actually there were quite a number of films the used Technicloer before then. Note this ten page history of Technicolor:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicol or1.htm

What is interesting is that Technicolor went through various technology changes:

System 1 [1917 - 1922]

System 2 [1922 - 1927] and System 3 [1927 - 1933]

System 4 [1932 - 1955]

Also of interesting to color palette junkies is Cine Color

All part of the Old Color System pages of the Wide Screen Museum

The Island of California

[Anonymous Coward]

California as an island. Ahh yes... just as I remember it as a young man.

That's "theorem" not "conjecture"

[Charles Dodgeson]

I'm old enough to remember when the four color conjecture became the four color theorem, and some of the contraversy about the proof.

Neal Stephenson's work

[0x0d0a]

Bah. Diamond Age was a waste of time.

And Stephenson was really negative about Zodiac, which I really enjoyed. The plot is very similar to Snow Crash, though with a different setting.

If you're a Snow Crash fan, reading Zodiac is a blast.

Cryptonomicon is very good in places, but a fair number of those 900 pages went into very slow material (building venture capital and doing oceanographic surveying is about as entertaining as it sounds).

I just want a Snow Crash II. Gritty, full of hyperbole and ridiculously badass characters, cynical as hell, and glorifying tech. And the sentences...NS must have rolled them around in his mouth for quite some time before committing them to paper. They read like film noir dialog.

Perfect...

[kitzilla]

...now Jerry Falwell has a travel map that's in-tune with his political views.

question

[Dexter's Laboratory]

When was the LOC not "31337"? :)

16th century antarctica maps

[dido]

I wonder if they have any of the anomalous 16th century maps that happen to accurately depict Antarctica as though it were free of ice. That's of course impossible, but there are maps, the most famous being the Admiral Piri Reis map, that accurately display the subglacial topography. There are also maps by Mercator and Buache that also display antarctic subglacial features.

Of course, the subglacial topography of Antarctica was unknown until sonar surveys of the 1950's, and the whole continent itself was unknown until the early 19th century.

Re:16th century antarctica maps

[WWWWolf]

Did someone mention "subglacial Antarctica"? Care to give me modern maps of that?

...

Most of these conclusions drawn from old maps are just misunderstandings. People see things that, due to coincidence, look vaguely like modern things and think it's a "historical anomaly". Always ask yourself: which is more likely - an undocumented, wholly unnoticed cataclysmic change in Earth within the period of written history, or a misunderstanding of facts?

Philippe Buache's map from 1739, that you mention, didn't really show "Antarctica without ice". I don't know why people came to that conclusion - there is an "inner sea" in the map, but it's clearly labelled a "conjecture", and the notes on the edges of the map talk of icebergs and glaciers and stuff, which doesn't sound too convincing to me! And on top of that, I'd clearly doubt the skill of any mapmaker who mark New Zealand and Tasmania as part of Antarctica =)

I wrote a summary of the map discussion to E2 the day I heard of this (An "anomalous" map would be spooky enough to keep me up 'til early in the morning, huh?) - and you can check out a good site that has a lot of scans and zooms and translations. Here's even more stuff. And more.

Re:16th century antarctica maps

[CowboyBob500]

Certainly Admiral Piri Reis claimed to have created his map from several maps he found in the Library of Alexandria that were supposed to be extremely ancient. Obviously the Library of Alexandria is long gone, but the Piri Reis map survives from (I think) 13th Century.

My point is that since you cannot check what was available from the Library of Alexandria, how can you conclude it was a "misunderstanding"? After all, most (if not all) medieval mapmakers were more than likely copying from older sources.

Bob

Re:16th century antarctica maps

[WWWWolf]

My point is that since you cannot check what was available from the Library of Alexandria, how can you conclude it was a "misunderstanding"?

The Library of Alexandria is pretty old, knowing that the ancient Egyptians were pretty ancient, too, but surely not they had been around to make maps 14 million years ago when the Antarctic was without the ice cap last time. I mean, according to our common knowledge, that was just a little bit before the humankind came down from the trees. (I thought it was somewhere around 4 million years ago, but the scientists were embarassed to call them "homo whatever" until we came out of beta test around 2 million years ago.)

Let's not talk about Piri Reis yet, but get back to Buache first. Some people saw Buache's map, drew their own conclusions from it without thinking what the map actually is, and thus ended up with pretty trippy results. People looked at the map, thought they saw something that supported their own strange theories, and used the map as a proof.

The same can be said about Piri Reis map: It's an old map, people took one look at it, and immediately drew wild conclusions. "Hey! Antarctic without ice!" and then someone who bothered to look at the map for more than a few minutes noted, "That's not Antarctic... the guy ran out of paper so he continued the South American coast sideways."

I saw a 1510-1520 dutch map with Nantuket Isle

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a 1510-1520 dutch map with Nantuket Isle on it.

It was spelled nantuke but still thats amazine for a probably-uninhabited island having a name honored for another 500 years. (Nantuket is next to cape cod).

I saw that on the ancient lewis and clark map they called Puget Sound (near seattle) Puget Sound.

WOW! I think its great when people leave names alone for hundreds of years.

Too bad they renamed Cape Canaveral for 30 years or so in an offensive act of legislature.

Now they renamed "Army Street" in SF, CA to a communist name. They are even giving the commie his own stamp.

I suppose russia and the us rename streets often, and lakes periodically. (all the countless lakes and streams with the n*gg*r word were alterred... the last holdout in MI went a couple years ago.

BUT THANKFULLY civilizations leave waterway inlets and islands unchanged in name.

Re:You may also be interested in...

[RapaNui]

Also, try the Perry-Castañeda Library at UTexas. - a good collection of both
vintage _and_ current interest / events related maps.

America is so new

[grahamsz]

My university was founded in 1583, and there are others in this country which were around at the time when your country was producing maps like this :)

Re:America is so new

[Hektor_Troy]

Hell, I've never attended university, but I can God damn jolly well tell you that I've had teachers older than that!

Actually two is enough

[Hektor_Troy]

Black for borders.
White for everything else.

Please ...

[Hektor_Troy]

1024x768 is no way NEAR full size! That's not even 14" diagonal, and the US is a couple of thousand MILES wide.

Next time get your act together.

and so much more!!

[KingRoo]

The American Memory project [of which the maps is a small fraction] has total history or old-time geek appeal

They have movies of people in SF in the early 1900s, sheet music of civil war songs, photos of old mining towns in Colorado, recordings of appalachia string bands, etc, etc.

One of my favorite sites on the web, and always being updated with more Olde Shite. recommended.

Arrogant Bastard Upstarts

[spirality]

That position is quite arrogant. I mean, do they think people realy want their crummy game system that bad. They're the ones who are going to be hurt if the whole Austrailian population won't have the opportunity to buy one. I'd say let them keep their stupid gaming consoles.

Microsoft is this huge upstart in a very mature industry. They just walk in and start demanding things, and changing things (for the worse) by bitching about mod chips and crying about IP.

Also, anyone reading this who has an XBox. Plain and simple, you're an idiot. Why would you ever support that company with your hard-earned money.

-Craig

I found my Home Town on a 1795 Map!

[Salis]

Yay old towns and cities! ;)

It's on the coast of New Jersey so it was pretty traveled at the time. I also found a great map of the movement of Washington's troops through my general area. I'm thinking of getting a professionally made print out of the full size maps. The resolution on all of them is simply GREAT. You can zoom in five times over with no pixellation.

Hsalis

Re:I found my Home Town on a 1795 Map!

[treat]

Yay old towns and cities! ;)

Americans think that a 200 year old city is "old".

Re:I found my Home Town on a 1795 Map!

[Salis]

Yeah, and Europeans think 200 miles (or even kilometers!!!) is a long way to drive!!!

So :P

Hsalis

Actually...

[Wyatt Earp]

Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10%

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo s/ us.html#People

Wow!

[Snover]

They converted the maps into Commodore 64 music? That's gotta be a rush.

(;))

Wow. Fast site!

[Little Boy Blue]

I'm impressed with how fast the site works. I wonder what's under the hood. LBB

Great Deadlands resource

[DunbarTheInept]

I'm currently game-mastering a Deadlands roleplaying game (real system, not the d20 port) where the action has centered around the Pacific Northwest in 1878. I've used the "American Memory" site for all sorts of stuff in that game, including a bird's eye view of Seattle, 1878that I rendered into a big three-page size printout, glued it to some cardboard, and am using it as the GM's screen, with the map facing outward to the players.

That site is great. The other handy thing about it is the indications of what areas were yet unexplored at the time. By looking at a map of the era I know what fuzzy unknown wilderness areas are ripe to be populated with all sorts of Bad Guy hideouts and such.

On another note, I noticed an awful lot of the birds-eye artist rendition maps are from the Wisconsin area, where I live, and I thought that was a bit odd. It turns out the reason for it is that the Library of Congres' project of comissioning maps of all the new cities happened to be in effect at about the time the artist's birds-eye rendition was in vouge, which was also about the time this part of the country was starting to be heavily settled.

More info: MrSID viewer

[DunbarTheInept]

To render that 3-page printout of the seattle map, I had to download the linux version of the MrSID viewer, download the SID file, and display it that way (the web interface scales gifs down to 640x400 at most).

Here's some stuff about the MrSID view (at least the linux version. I didn't try any of the other ports).

1 - All it lets you do is view on the screen. It has no "print" option.
2 - It does have the ability to dump out to a number of common image file formats, but it only dumps out the image at the resolution being displayed currently on the screen, so it cannot make an image larger than your screen's resolution.
3 - I know the SID files are actually capable of much higher resolution than that.
4 - So what I ended up having to do to make the big hi-res version of the image was to have MrSID zoom in on various sections of the picture, and save those zoomed-in areas as seperate files.
5 - Then I glued the seperate images together in GIMP into one big image. This I had to do visually since there was no way to tell MrSID to size itself to a specific section of the image by coordinates,
and so my zoomed-in dumps had overlapping bits.

Summary: The site is very very cool, but the MrSID viewer you have to use to get the full resolution images is annoying. I'd much rather just download the large version as a really big JPEG and use whatever image editor I feel like once I have it.

Re:More info: MrSID viewer

[dvdeug]

5 - Then I glued the seperate images together in GIMP into one big image. This I had to do visually since there was no way to tell MrSID to size itself to a specific section of the image by coordinates,
and so my zoomed-in dumps had overlapping bits.

There's a program called grunch that will do that automatically.

The fine print...

[twoslice]

These primary historical documents reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Library of Congress does not endorse the views expressed in these collections, which may contain materials offensive to some readers.

I think the cut and pasted this from a PrOn site!

(Score:6, unfuckingbelievable)

Re:The fine print...

[twoslice]

In all serious though, Columbus was just plain wrong. The world is not flat -- It's crooked!

IE 4 supported limited PNG

[yerricde]

From what I've heard, slightly earlier versions of IE on Windows had semi-cruddy PNG support.

Non-transparent indexed-color PNGs work just fine in IE 4.x and later. Binary-transparent indexed-color PNGs work just fine in IE 5.x and later. Alpha-transparent PNGs still don't work even in 6.x, but GIF supports only binary transparency and indexed color anyway.

pin eight has burned all GIFs.

NS4 runs on six-year-old school computers

[yerricde]

there's no reason anyone on Earth should continue to use Netscape 4.

Make Mozilla useful on a six-year-old P100 with 24 MB of RAM of the type commonly found in K-12 school systems, and I'll believe you.

Re:NS4 runs on six-year-old school computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, when it comes to school technology funding, I wish I lived where you do. My area wastes enough money for an additional teacher in each of twenty or so schools on new computer hardware acquisitions annually.

See, since they need to use their full budget in order to keep it, they buy the top of the line $2000 systems, rather than the entirely-adequate-for-the-next-four-years $700 ones.

Re:NS4 runs on six-year-old school computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Opera, use Lynx, heck, use Netscape 3, but don't use Netscape 4!

I thought .SID was a music format

[yerricde]

I thought .SID was a music format that contained a Commodore 64 program to play music through its SID synthesizer chip.

C'MON!

[jovlinger]

Sorry to yell and all, but c'mon, what sort of geeks are you?

The Four color conjecture is interesting because its confirmation was the first computer assisted proof.

It was proven manually that all maps are reducible to 1500 odd cases. These were then exhaustively tested over 1000 odd computer hours to verify that indeed they could all be colored using no more than four colors.

Four Color Conjecture

[jmd!]

What about a continent with five contries:

+vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv+
1 1 1
+vvvvvv+vvvvvvvvvvvv+
1 2 1 1
+vvvvvv+ X 1
1 3 1 1 ones used in place of pipe due to lameness filter
+vvvvvv+vvvvvvvvvvvv+ v used in place of dash due to lameness filter
1 4 1
+vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv+

What color do you suggest for the country labeled "X"?

HOW IRONIC IS IT SLASHDOT'S "LAMENESS FILTER" IS ITSELF INDESCRIBABLY LAME?

Last Post!

[alpg]

I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds
entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail
to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to
perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again
from the top down, the result is always different.
-- Mrs. La Touche

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