The Apollo Transforming Printer

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

On the Library of Congress’s Worlds Revealed blog, a fascinating piece on a fascinating piece of hardware used by NASA to process lunar photographs taken for and by the Apollo program into orthorectified imagery useful for mapping.

Images from “Apollo Camera Systems and Lunar Mapping,” by Frederick Doyle, showing examples of scan angles from cameras imaging the lunar surface and the corrections made in the final orthorectified print.
Images from “Apollo Camera Systems and Lunar Mapping,” by Frederick Doyle, USGS. Frederick Doyle Papers.

Designing these photography systems was quite complex, as the team had to account for the movement of the spacecraft, distortion introduced by the camera’s lenses, variation in terrain on the lunar surface, the scanning speed of the camera, the angle of the sun at a given time (which affected the amount of light available), and extreme temperature changes (to name a few!). Apollo’s new panoramic camera produced film images with very wide angles, resulting in a distortion of scale and a curved horizon with a varying scale. […]

To make the panoramic photos useful for mapping, the images themselves needed to be corrected such that the distortions introduced by the spacecraft motion disappeared. Enter the Apollo Transforming Printer. It was able to remove the distortion introduced by the panoramic camera by reconstructing the motions of the orbital camera. Unlike today’s digital rectification processes, this was an optical remapping. The Printer utilized the original film negative, reprojected it through a lens and mirror system, and produced a print that was geometrically corrected.

‘Three Norths’ Leave England

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Ordnance Survey has announced that the triple alignment of true north, grid north (on OS maps) and magnetic north—the so-called three norths—has left England and is now over the North Sea. It’ll make landfall again in Scotland late next year. This is an artifact of, and specific to, Ordnance Survey maps, whose grid has a meridian is two degrees west longitude, east and west of which there is some difference between true north and grid north, and the movement of the north magnetic pole. In other words, the third north is product-specific. The triple alignment has been working its way north for the past three years; see my previous post for more.

Luke Jerram’s Mirror Moon

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Installation artist Luke Jerram’s past work includes large reproductions of the Earth, Moon, Sun and Mars. His latest is Mirror Moon, a touchable stainless steel globe of the Moon created with NASA topographic data.

A one-metre version of Mirror Moon debuted at the Royal Society last year. A larger, two-metre version is coming to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich next March to mark its 350th anniversary. Jerram discusses the project here.

More on Le Guin’s Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The exhibition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s maps at the Architectural Association Gallery in London (previously, previously) wrapped up last Saturday. The Library of America has an interview with Sarah Shin, who co-curated the exhibit and co-edited the accompanying book (which comes out in North America next month). A sample:

I’ve always loved how Le Guin describes writing as translating, asking “What is the other text, the original?” Similarly, I think that drawing maps, for Le Guin, was a way of making visible what already exists elsewhere in the source: “the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them.”

Thanks to Zvi for the tip.

The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin ed. by So Mayer and Sarah Shin. Spiral House, 21 Oct 2025 (U.S. 10 Jan 2026), £23. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

2025 Spiral Globe Ornament

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Thumbnail of a printable image that can be used to create a globe ornament, with instructions at the bottom.

John Nelson’s near-annual globe ornament blog posts are always a revelation. With the exception of the one time he went to 3D printing, they’re paper craft exercises that show just how many ways you can run card stock through a printer1 and end up with a reasonable approximation of a globe. This year’s, which uses spiralled vertical strips instead of gores, is no exception.

See also the ArcGIS Blog mirror, the modifiable ArcGIS Pro package, and a roundup of his past craft ornaments.

A History of Swiss Cartography

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Book cover: Engineers of Map Art

Engineers of Map Art, a book on the history of Swiss cartography that focuses on work done at ETH Zurich, came out in English last September. (The German edition, Ingenieure der Kartenkunst, came out last January.) “This publication provides a comprehensive overview of 170 years of cartography at ETH Zurich and pays tribute to the personalities who have contributed to the development of the discipline. It is published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation and highlights its contribution to science and practice.” Eduard Imhof is covered in chapter 4. It’s available for free download as an open-access PDF; a hard copy can be ordered for CHF 50. Thanks to Peter Wrobel for the tip.

Cincinnati and Columbus in 50 Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Book covers for Cincinnati in 50 Maps and Columbus in 50 Maps.

Two more books from Belt Publishing came out this week, both part of their “50 Maps” series, each focusing on an Ohio city: Cincinnati in 50 Maps, edited by Nick Swartsell and with cartography by Andy Woodruff; and Columbus in 50 Maps, edited by Brent Warren and with cartography by Vicky Johnson-Dahl. They join Cleveland in 50 Maps (2019) and other books in the series that aren’t about Ohio cities. Columbus-based independent news outlet Matter has a feature on Columbus in 50 Maps.

  • Cincinnati in 50 Maps ed. by Nick Swartsell; cartography by Andy Woodruff. Belt, 2 Dec 2025, $30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
  • Columbus in 50 Maps ed. by Brent Warren; cartography by Vicky Johnson-Dahl. Belt, 2 Dec 2025, $30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop. 

Related: Map Books of 2025.

GIS and Enshittification

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Linda Stevens believes that the GIS industry is showing signs of enshittification: “Coined by tech critic Cory Doctorow, ‘enshitification’ describes how once-great platforms decay under the pressures of greed and control. They begin as open, user-centered systems but gradually morph into closed ecosystems optimized for corporate rent-seeking rather than public good. GIS, long built on ideals of openness and shared data, now shows many of these symptoms.” In a second piece she says GIS, “with its specialized user base and high switching costs, is particularly vulnerable,” and lists some warning signs to watch out for (price hikes, degraded featurs and service, lock-in, upselling). She neither names names nor specifies specifics, mind.

Previously: Reimagining GIS.

Alabama’s New Election Map Was Drawn by a Teenager

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Alabama’s state senate elections will now use a map drawn by an 18-year-old student. The judge chose the map over options put forward by the court’s special master because it changed the existing map less (see the court decision). The new map was necessary after the judge found the previous map violated the Voting Rights Act. [Glyn Moody]

National Rail’s All Stations Interactive Route Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

National Rail’s All Stations Interactive Route Map is only nominally interactive, in that you can pan and zoom, but clicking on lines or stations doesn’t actually do anything. That said, it shows every operator, route and station in Great Britain down to subways and tram lines, and unlike the static PDF version it’s actually legible when you zoom out. More rail network maps of Great Britain here. [Richard Fairhurst]

Map Books of 2025 Updated, Plus Some Gift Suggestions

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

It’s the end of November and I’m still finding titles to add to the Map Books of 2025 page. More to the point, I’m only now finding out about books that came out last January. The list is a mix of (1) GIS manuals, (2) academic monographs (many of which shamelessly lifted from Matthew Edney’s 2025 Books in Map History list), and (3) books aimed at the mainstream book market, most of which come out in the second half of the year to take advantage of the holiday season. Peruse the list and you might find something that fits the bill on that front; I’ve marked what look like some possibilities with a icon.

Speaking of which, I’ve done gift guides in the past but lately I haven’t been able to keep up. Fortunately, Andrew Middleton, who runs a map store and kind of has to keep up, has some book suggestions, not all of which came out this year (but then why do they have to). And if you’d like something other than books, or would like to avoid certain online retailers, have a look at what’s on offer via the Independent Map Sellers page.

The Man Who Drew Wellington

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Thomas Ward survey map of Wellington City, sheet 22, 1892. Wellington City Council Archives.
Thomas Ward survey map of Wellington City, sheet 22, 1892. Wellington City Council Archives.

In the 1890s, Thomas Ward created maps of the city of Wellington, New Zealand that are the subject of a new book by Elizabeth Cox, Mr Ward’s Map, and this article in New Zealand Geographic about both Ward and Cox’s book:

Over two and a half years, Ward walked every street in the city. He drew the outline of every single building, including garden sheds and outhouses (but spared himself the effort of documenting henhouses). Historian Elizabeth Cox thinks that Ward may have knocked on all the doors of all Wellington’s houses, too, because he recorded the number of rooms in each dwelling, the number of storeys, and the building materials used. The resulting map is huge, spanning 88 sheets of paper, each the size of a poster. […]

After Ward stopped updating the map himself, others took on the task—much less perfectly, notes Cox—leaving behind ink spills, coffee-cup rings, drips of tea, and scribbled mathematical equations. It was the city’s primary map for more than 80 years, only superseded in the 1970s.

Today, a copy of Ward’s original, plus many of its subsequent versions, lives in a set of wide, shallow drawers in the Wellington City Archives—and online, as an overlay in mapping software for anyone to use.

Ward’s maps can be seen here and here (updated version). As you can see from the sample above, they’re at a level of detail that would give Sanborn maps a run for their money. Thanks to Ken Dowling for the tip.

Book cover: Mr Ward’s Map by Elizabeth Cox

Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street
by Elizabeth Cox
Massey University Press, 13 Nov 2025, NZD $90
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Above & Below: Cartography Beyond Terrain

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Poster from the Above & Below exhibition at Stanford’s David Rumsey Map Center.

Above & Below: Cartography Beyond Terrain, an exhibition at Stanford Library’s David Rumsey Map Center that launched in conjunction with this year’s Ruderman Conference, “explores how cartography depicts the depths of the Earth, the ocean floor, weather systems, the solar system, and even the seemingly intangible internet—anything but the thin boundary that divides land and sky that we tend to associate with maps.” Free admission, on display through 27 February 2026.