notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Top: London Underground Circuit Map Radio by Yuri Suzuki, 2012 (more here, here).

Bottom: The Underground ‘straight eight’ all-electric skit-set circuit diagram by Harry Beck, March 1933.

An 1882 map by Richard A Proctor showing the cones of visibility of the 2012 transit of Venus (which happens tomorrow). It’s remarkable partly as it’s so well designed, and partly as it’s over a hundred years old but matches the modern map.

Three books by Capital Transport Publishing on the history of London’s underground maps: No Need To Ask by David Leboff & Tim Demuth, Mr Beck’s Underground Map by Ken Garland, and Underground Maps After Beck by Maxwell J Roberts.

Taken together, the three cover over a hundred years of maps of the Underground, from the different companies in the early part of the 1900s, through the pivotal 1933 Harry Beck diagram, and to the present day. The writers are all well qualified (Tim Demuth, co-author of No Need To Ask, designed the London Railways map of the 1970s; Ken Garland is a respected designer and writer; while Maxwell Roberts has designed his own maps aided by his primary study of cognition) and, despite some overlaps between the books, generally they cover the story very well.

Probably the most interesting is the middle volume, covering both the route to the Beck diagram, his many variations over the years as lines were extended (and management meddled), and the nearly decade-long fight to keep designing the map in the early 1960s. The book includes the worst diagram since 1933, the Hutchinson design, and a first look at the Garbutt diagram that came to succeed it.

The Garbutt diagram and its slow evolution (as opposed to the Cambrian explosion of variations that Beck produced) is at the heart of the final book, which I think I enjoyed more than many would; the story is one of subtle change, livened mainly by the changing landscape of the system (with the Victoria, Jubilee, and DLR lines expanding the scope of the map).

Overall, I’d recommend Garland’s book on Beck’s diagrams to anyone with even a passing interest in the Underground and mapmaking. Roberts is more for the completist, while those looking for history and more decorative design may enjoy No Need To Ask.

The Lost Rivers of London, a ceramic by Loraine Rutt (via things).

Stephen Walter’s London Subterranea, another art map featured in Claire Dobbin’s book (and one of her choices of the best maps in the London Transport Museum collection). It’s been posted to io9 and Londonist today, with the latter providing close-ups along with a a good description:

Walter has painstakingly charted the buried rivers, Tube lines, bunkers, sewers, government tunnels and other hypogeal secrets of London. He’s also included mysterious and underworld elements, such as unsolved murders, ley lines and pagan burial sites. Like his famed 2008 work The Island, to which this is a companion piece, London Subterranea is a mesmerising tagliatella, combining painstaking research with artistic whimsy.

As they note, it’ll be displayed at the London Transport Museum’s Mind the Maps Friday Late tomorrow.

Chris Heathcote’s picture of my incoming flight stacking over north-west London last Thursday.

Don’t go where I can’t see you by Jeremy Wood:

GPS flight tracks with section of the River Thames in London
1:500 000 Scale, 100 km Grid

Indirectly via prosthetic knowledge. I also noticed his earlier My Ghost in Claire Dobbin’s new book, London Underground Maps, which seems to have some overlap with the previous three Capital Transport books on the map (which I should probably write about), but which also covers some new territory. I may have to buy it.

Two photos from the amazing, huge pickmix.co.uk site, collecting photographs from the London Transport Museum’s archive. On the left, in a 1977 colour print by Paul Proctor:

The experimental press-button Passenger Route Indicator machine installed in the ticket hall at Heathrow Central (now Heathrow Terminals 1,2,3) Underground station. The indicator incorporated a TV screen designed to display a diagrammatic route map of the chosen journey.

And to the right, a 1974 photograph by H J Hare & Son:

A passenger consults a route indicator machine at Oxford Circus Underground station. Oxford Circus services Central, Victoria and Bakerloo lines.

You can see more of my favourite images from the site. See also: a similar map in Paris.

“China Shipping Container Lines Co., Ltd currently operates over 80 major routes and feeder services both domestically and internationally. Its service network covers Chinese costal areas and major trade regions in Asia, Europe, America, Africa and Persian Gulf.”

Four of the many, many different map overlays at the London Profiler site. Sadly the data is a little out of date (it looks like it hasn’t been updated since around 2008; I first saw it in 2009), but it’s still fun to play with for a while.

(The images are captioned, but if you’re really curious about what’s displayed, I’d urge you to check out the maps in full.)