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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?"
Apparently they didn't have patent issues to deal with then, either. Give me PNG or give me death.
Who thought the LOC could be so 31337?"
Actually, librarians were one of the earlier professions outside of the hard sciences to "get" computers.
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. BB
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
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Pretty much every piece of land on the planet has been conquered by someone at some point in history. Get over it.
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.
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.
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."
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!'
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.