[HN Gopher] New Theoretical Research Trends in Cartography
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       New Theoretical Research Trends in Cartography
        
       Author : bryanrasmussen
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2025-04-04 18:23 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.researchgate.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.researchgate.net)
        
       | chippadoodle wrote:
       | What is the interest in this article from 2001? There is a rich
       | GIS and visualization history that has happened since then ... if
       | you really want to see something radical look at Wild Bill
       | Bunge's work
        
       | oersted wrote:
       | > Until the middle of the 20th Century, cartography was more an
       | art than a science.
       | 
       | Strange perspective, accurate nautical charts were critical
       | infrastructure in the age of sail, making them and using them was
       | a very technical endeavor backed by significant financing. The
       | brightest scientists of the period spent a lot energy on the
       | longitude problem and similar navigation bottlenecks. Accurate
       | land maps were also important for military and state finance
       | purposes. Much of early mathematics and astronomy were focused on
       | measuring the Earth and pinpointing your location.
       | 
       | I'm not sure if map-making was a science explicitly, there was no
       | UX academia like there is now, but it was certainly a serious
       | engineering field rather than an "art", and dismissing that rich
       | history of know-how seems like a poor foundation for a review of
       | map-making theory.
        
         | godelski wrote:
         | I'm guessing the authors here are referring to the fact that
         | many places were really poorly drawn. There was high detail in
         | regions where the map makers were local to but this got fuzzy
         | real fast. Some would even do things like plant fake cities on
         | their map as a means of fraud detection. A secret signature if
         | you will. Someone who copied their map was likely to copy the
         | fake place.
         | 
         | You're definitely right that this has a lot to do with early
         | mathematics but remember that that is a small part of map
         | making. How do you define coast lines? Rivers? Borders? The
         | devil is in the details. With older maps the general shapes
         | would be (usually) accurate but it could get fuzzy around the
         | edges. Literally. It's not like they could get a picture from
         | space, or even from the sky. It would take years to measure
         | many things that would take us minutes now
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-04-06 23:00 UTC)