Library of Congress Map Collections from 1500's 251
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?"
useless unless (Score:5, Funny)
Re:useless unless (Score:2, Funny)
Maps are sadly out of state (Score:5, Funny)
You missed the disclaimer (Score:5, Funny)
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."
Re:Maps are sadly out of state (Score:3, Funny)
works for me (Score:5, Funny)
Ok Ok Ok!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ok Ok Ok!!! (Score:2)
Re:Ok Ok Ok!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
GIF Format? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:GIF Format? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GIF Format? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:GIF Format? (Score:2)
Re:GIF Format? (Score:2)
-Kevin
Re:Technicolor (Score:2)
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicol or1.htm [widescreenmuseum.com]
What is interesting is that Technicolor went through various technology changes:
System 1 [1917 - 1922] [widescreenmuseum.com]
System 2 [1922 - 1927] and System 3 [1927 - 1933] [widescreenmuseum.com]
System 4 [1932 - 1955] [widescreenmuseum.com]
Also of interesting to color palette junkies is Cine Color [widescreenmuseum.com]
All part of the Old Color System [widescreenmuseum.com] pages of the Wide Screen Museum [widescreenmuseum.com]
Re:GIF Format? (Score:5, Funny)
They're maps - you only need four colours...
Actually two is enough (Score:2)
White for everything else.
Re:GIF Format? (Score:5, Informative)
More info [google.com].
Re:GIF Format? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GIF Format? (Score:2, Informative)
Why don't you try it out on a piece of paper...
Re:GIF Format? (Score:2)
Maps have 5 colours; one is reserved for water
500 years? (Score:2, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:500 years? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:500 years? (Score:2)
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? (Score:2)
Re:500 years? (Score:2)
SVG? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SVG? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:SVG? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:SVG? (Score:2)
Librarians (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, librarians were one of the earlier professions outside of the hard sciences to "get" computers.
Sig not quite right (Score:2)
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.
Testify - Librarians: We're Not What You Think (Score:5, Informative)
Get a grip, nerds, librarians are Not What You Think [tk421.net]. (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 [slashdot.org].
Re:Testify - Librarians: We're Not What You Think (Score:2)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
"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 (Score:2)
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:Librarians (Score:2)
Re:Librarians (Score:3, Informative)
theifs! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:theifs! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:theifs! (Score:2)
Burn all gifs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Burn all gifs? (Score:2, Informative)
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).
Interesting comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Burn all gifs? (Score:2)
Re:Burn all gifs? (Score:3, Interesting)
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? (Score:2, Funny)
We don't care: we've all blocked images.slashdot.com to stop the adverts.
More old maps (Score:5, Informative)
Related Link... (Score:4, Informative)
MrSID viewer? (Score:2, Troll)
Re:MrSID viewer? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MrSID viewer? (Score:2)
Re:MrSID viewer? (Score:2)
Re:MrSID viewer? (Score:2)
Are you sure you aren't just seeing the GIFs generated on the Zoom/Resolution page itself?
Re:MrSID viewer? (Score:2)
Re:MrSID viewer? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:MrSID viewer? (Score:2)
or that fuck.off@spam.address.lookers.com is a fake address?
Heaven forbid I register.
MapQuest (Score:5, Funny)
Batman, where are we? (Score:2)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Twilight Zone... (Score:5, Funny)
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... (Score:2)
America is so new (Score:2)
Re:America is so new (Score:2)
Olde Maps (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Anyone figure out how to zoom in? (Score:2)
Hack the image URL! (Score:3, Informative)
Hack the image URL. The position and resolution are right in the query. For example, a 1024x768 detail [loc.gov] 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! (Score:2)
And then I had a bit of fun with a fragment of the output and some old atlases from my library
Re:Anyone figure out how to zoom in? (Score:2)
.SID format (Score:3, Interesting)
Who thought the LOC could be so 31337? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, the world's first library [abc.net.au] just reopened a couple of days ago.
Or you could visit this extraordinary place. [yale.edu]
I'll tell you... (Score:5, Interesting)
Think back to SnowCrash [amazon.com], 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... (Score:2)
Neal Stephenson's work (Score:2)
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.
Another interesting collection of old maps... (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Full size gifs available (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Full size gifs available (Score:4, Informative)
A 1024x768 image of the map of the Americas, mentioned in the submission: Click Here. [loc.gov]
Please ... (Score:3, Funny)
Next time get your act together.
But... (Score:2, Funny)
You may also be intrested in... (Score:5, Informative)
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/,
Re:You may also be interested in... (Score:2, Informative)
vintage _and_ current interest / events related maps.
submissions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maps Rule! (Score:2, Funny)
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 ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:how did they know ... (Score:2, Interesting)
mrsid viewer on linux and the gui (Score:2, Informative)
Anyone else having such issues?
narbey
16th century antarctica maps (Score:2)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [everything2.com] 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 [bermuda-triangle.org] that has a lot of scans and zooms and translations. Here's even more stuff. [about.com] And more. [intersurf.com]
Great Deadlands resource (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
and so my zoomed-in dumps had overlapping bits.
There's a program called grunch that will do that automatically.
Re:Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a.... (Score:3, Funny)
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:Does it clearly show the areas stolen by the US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:America in the 1500's? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [everything2.com]. When did America come into existance???
Re:America in the 1500's? (Score:2)
Really? Where did Columbus land in 1492 then?
India?
Re:Burn All GIFS (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me know you need help burning your return key.
Re:Burn All GIFS (Score:2)
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.
and so much more!! (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:I found my Home Town on a 1795 Map! (Score:2)
Americans think that a 200 year old city is "old".