Mapmaker: Inō Tadataka

A worthy second life...

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Inō postage stamp

Ian: This Inō was an interesting man. No ordinary person for Edo. Businessman, scholar, surveyor, cartographer.

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Ivan: First a businessman, then a scholar?

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Ian: Retired from business at 49. Then studied western astronomy, geography and maths.

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Ivan:  productive second life that extended his retirement?

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Ian: A long one. Lived to 73. Physically strong too. By his seventies he’d walked more than 35,000 kilometers to map Japan.

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Ivan: A contract?

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Ian: Not at first. Used his own money, then negotiated with the government suggesting it was important to map the coastline, arguing that Russians were arriving in Hokkaido.

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Voice-over

Inō Tadataka (伊能 忠敬)  lived in the Edo Period  between 1745 and 1818. His atlas of Japan was completed by his disciples 3 years after he died. Evidently he knew how to foster followers who completed his work and archived appropriately.

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Infographics by Humboldt 1807 and Minard 1869

Beyond mere maps…

Humboldt: Naturgemälde

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Andrea: Alexander von Humboldt published a stunning infographic, in 1807. It was a picture of Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador. He called it Naturgemälde meaning a ‘painting of nature’ but which also implies a sense of unity. On either side were details of temperature, humidity, light and how they influenced the plant life at different elevations.

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Minard:
Napoleon's March on Moscow

Edward: Napoleon’s army marched to Moscow in 1812. Some 420,000 set off and only 10,000 made it back. Charles Minard made an infographic of the disaster in 1869. It included geography of the route, numbers of soldiers, and temperatures.

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Voice-over

Infographics are not new. Humboldt had more than 50 artists design many graphics to explain how geography and nature were interrelated. Minard was an engineer who produced more than 50 statistical charts.

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Harry Beck, Map Man of the London Tube

Map A: Geographic

Voice-over

Map B: Connective

The design of the London Tube map is brilliant in its simplicity. It does not show the stations’ geographic relations above ground but rather their connective relations below ground. The approaches to map design could be characterized as spaghetti (Map A) vs loosely gridded (Map B).

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Back Story

Eduardo: Harry Beck, who designed the original London Tube map was called Map Man in a BBC2 documentary.

Max: He is credited as its chief architect?

Eduardo: He wasn’t an architect, he worked as a draftsman for London Transport and suggested the original schematic diagram in 1931.

Max: And the public loved it.

Eduardo: They did but the publicity office at London Transport never actually commissioned Beck’s map and only accepted it as his voluntary experiment.

Max: Another uncredited originator?

Eduardo: By all accounts he only received five or ten pounds but they eventually did put his name on it. And there are plaques at Finchley Central Station and outside the house he lived in commemorating  him.

Max: So he eventually felt vindicated?

Eduardo: He defended the aesthetics of his vision. The verticals, the diagonals, the even distances between stations. And he didn’t take kindly to modifications to the design.

Max: Some designers can be protective and proprietorial about their visions.

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Narrative Mapping on an Angry Birds Trajectory?

Mapping a Narrative Trajectory

Two narratologists explore how to map a trajectory…

Roland: A story starts off with characters. A problem, it may be another character, or an event like a war, ushers in a problem. A conflict ensues. A resolution emerges.

Raymond: Similar to what Bremond calls a state of deficiency or a satisfactory state, progressing through a procedure of improvement and ends usually with the establishment of a satisfactory state?

Roland: It begins at A, rising to B, and falls back to C. We might call this a narrative trajectory. Like mapping an Angry Birds trajectory.

Raymond: Classical narratives such as fairy tales might be mapped like this. But what about post-classical narratives, with flashbacks and flashforwards? An Angry Birds trajectory can’t show that.

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Voice-over

The answer to what a post-classical narrative trajectory looks is a flashback to tomorrow’s post.

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