One of the largest online map collections has been compiled by David Rumsey, a private collector who has generously made high resolution copies of his maps available to the public. As of this date, the site contains more than 129,000 maps and images, and offers countless hours of diversion to anyone who loves looking at the various ways the world has been depicted over the many centuries that maps have been produced.
I could have spent all day searching the site for the perfect example to post here. As tempting as that was, I instead decided to be more Zen about it and post the first thing that caught my eye. That turned out to a map of airways between New York and Washington D.C. shown above. This map is notable for the many other details it shows besides airways, since commercial aviation was in its infancy at this time.
I especially appreciate that an airways map included so many railroads. One would think that such a map would not want to feature the competition, but in thinking it through I realized that a landmark such as a railroad line would have been a useful navigation aid, considering the low elevations at which planes flew back then.
One useful feature of the site is that it allows map files to be “georeferenced” – lined up with against a current map of the same location, which enables you to more clearly see changes in an area over time. Old maps can also be compared to each other in this way, and the site even allows users to upload their own maps for georeferencing.
The site includes a fun variation on a keyword search, which searches for text on maps rather than in text documents or catalog data. This results a series of images like the one below, which I would love to have as wallpaper in my office.
