The Map Room

@maproomblog

A blog by @jonathancrowe.net about maps in all their forms, on and off since 2003. maproomblog.com Email digest: maproomblog.com/about/subscribe Mastodon: mapstodon.space/@maproomblog Support via Patreon: patreon.com/jonathancrowe

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The Map Room@maproomblog· May 22

This week’s posts: Maps and Art: Ed Fairburn, Maps as Decor www.maproomblog.com/2026/05/maps... Boston in 50 Maps www.maproomblog.com/2026/05/bost... Designing Maps for an Apple Watch App www.maproomblog.com/2026/05/desi... Sierra Nevada Earth Science Atlas www.maproomblog.com/2026/05/sier...

A mosaic of images from the past week’s posts, including an example of Ed Fairbairn’s art, the cover of Boston in 50 Maps, some maps presented in Apple Watch format, and a geologic map of the Sierra Nevada in California.

The Map Room@maproomblog· May 8

Only one post this week: it’s my review of THIS WAY UP, the book by the Map Men Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman. www.maproomblog.com/2026/05/revi...

Cover art for This Way Up, a book by the Map Men Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman.

The Map Room@maproomblog· May 1

This week on The Map Room (1/2): The Constitutionality of Geofence Warrants Is Before the U.S. Supreme Court Today www.maproomblog.com/2026/04/the-... A Close Look at the Verbiest Map www.maproomblog.com/2026/04/a-cl...

Ferdinand Verbiest, Kun yu quan tu, 1674. Ink on paper, eight scrolls, 217 × 54 cm. Library of Congress.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Apr 10

This week on The Map Room: Who Gets to Digitize Colonial-Era Congolese Geological Maps? www.maproomblog.com/2026/04/who-... The Vocabulary of Water www.maproomblog.com/2026/04/the-... The Sky Atlas www.maproomblog.com/2026/04/the-...

A mosaic from this week's posts: the cover for The Sky Atlas, and two maps depicting patterns in the names of streams in the United States.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Mar 27

This week on The Map Room (2/2): John Rocque’s 1746 Map of London www.maproomblog.com/2026/03/john... Ads Coming to Apple Maps This Summer (U.S. and Canada) www.maproomblog.com/2026/03/ads-...

John Rocque, A plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark, with the contiguous buildings, 1746. An engraved map of 18th-century London in 24 panels.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Mar 13

This week on The Map Room (1/2): La figure de la Terre www.maproomblog.com/2026/03/la-f... Imaginary Maps as Cartographic Guides www.maproomblog.com/2026/03/imag... More on GPS Jamming in the Strait of Hormuz www.maproomblog.com/2026/03/more...

A mosaic of images related to this week’s posts: a map of Minnesota hot dishes by region, a promotional image from Google related to its Google Maps announcements this week, and a detail from John Churchman, The Magnetic Atlas (1794) related to an exhibition in Paris.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Feb 27

This week on The Map Room: Pinhead Map Icons www.maproomblog.com/2026/02/pinh... ‘The Most Amazing Map Exhibition Ever Mounted’ www.maproomblog.com/2026/02/the-... ‘And Then the Bots Came’ www.maproomblog.com/2026/02/and-... (1/2)

A mosaic of images from the past week: a thumbnail image for a surrealist map film, a product photo for a map-themed fountain pen, and a set of icons for online maps.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Feb 20

This week on the blog: A Zero Declination World Map www.maproomblog.com/2026/02/a-ze... One-Day Oxford Symposium Explores Digital and Analog Maps www.maproomblog.com/2026/02/one-... Da Vinci’s Maps www.maproomblog.com/2026/02/da-v... The Library of Lost Maps www.maproomblog.com/2026/02/the-...

A mosaic of images. Clockwise: Da Vinci's octant map of the world (1514), the book cover for The Library of Lost Maps by James Cheshire (2025), and an xkcd comic, Zero Declination, showing up as magnetic north.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Dec 19

This week on The Map Room: ‘Three Norths’ Leave England www.maproomblog.com/2025/12/thre... The Apollo Transforming Printer www.maproomblog.com/2025/12/the-...

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.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Dec 5

This week on The Map Room (2/2): Cincinnati and Columbus in 50 Maps www.maproomblog.com/2025/12/cinc...

Book covers for Cincinnati in 50 Maps and Columbus in 50 Maps.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Nov 28

This week on The Map Room (1/2): Above & Below: Cartography Beyond Terrain www.maproomblog.com/2025/11/abov... The Man Who Drew Wellington www.maproomblog.com/2025/11/the-...

Clockwise from top left: Poster from the Above & Below exhibition at Stanford’s David Rumsey Map Center; Book cover for Mr Ward’s Map by Elizabeth Cox; Thomas Ward survey map of Wellington City, sheet 22, 1892. Wellington City Council Archives.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Nov 21

This week on The Map Room: How Imaging Quasars Improved GPS Accuracy www.maproomblog.com/2025/11/how-... Boston at 1:40 Scale www.maproomblog.com/2025/11/bost... NACIS 2025 on YouTube www.maproomblog.com/2025/11/naci... Maps from a North Korean Encyclopedia www.maproomblog.com/2025/11/maps...

Images from the Great Korean Encyclopedia, CD-ROM edition.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Oct 3

This week on The Map Room: First Radar Images from NISAR www.maproomblog.com/2025/09/firs... Ethics in Cartography www.maproomblog.com/2025/09/ethi... Review: Earth Shapers www.maproomblog.com/2025/10/revi...

Imagery of Maine’s Mount Desert Island captured by NISAR’s L-band radar on 21 Aug 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Sep 24

@mapper.bsky.social Mapstodon n’est plus? Voici ce qui me salue quand je le visite.

Safari Can’t Find the Server: Safari can’t open the page “https://mapstodon.space” because Safari can’t find the server “mapstodon.space”. [screenshot]

The Map Room@maproomblog· Jun 30

New post: Fuller Goes to Washington www.maproomblog.com/2025/06/full...

A crop from Gareth Fuller’s pen-and-ink pictorial map of Washington, D.C., published as The DMV in 2025.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Jun 25

New post: Star Wars Galaxy Map Updated www.maproomblog.com/2025/06/star...

A crop from the map of the Star Wars galaxy found on Starwars.com. https://www.starwars.com/star-wars-galaxy-map

The Map Room@maproomblog· Jun 24

New post: 27.3% of the Ocean Floor Has Now Been Mapped www.maproomblog.com/2025/06/27-3...

A map of the world showing where the seafloor has been mapped. New bathymetric data added in the past year is shown in red. Source: Seabed 2030. https://seabed2030.org/2025/06/21/seabed-2030-announces-millions-of-square-kilometers-of-new-seafloor-data-on-world-hydrography-day/

The Map Room@maproomblog· May 7

Empty Land Doesn’t Vote (and Neither Do Kangaroos): What Australian and Canadian Election Maps Do (and Don’t Do) About It www.maproomblog.com/2025/05/empt...

Screenshot of an interactive map of the 2025 Australian federal election results from the Guardian website. The Guardian calls it an “exaggerated” map, in that geographically small urban constituencies are slightly enlarged for visibility while maintaining a reasonably geographically accurate shape overall.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Apr 11

Three posts: Maps and Games Roundup www.maproomblog.com/2025/04/maps... If You Thought There Would Be Nothing More to Report About the ‘Gulf of America’ Nonsense, You Were Mistaken www.maproomblog.com/2025/04/if-y... Daniel Huffman’s Asymmetric Monstrosity www.maproomblog.com/2025/04/dani...

Daniel Huffman’s map of the world using his 'asymmetric monstrosity' composite map projection.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Apr 2

New post: New York City Subway Map Gets a Complete Makeover www.maproomblog.com/2025/04/new-...

MTA Chair & CEO Janno Lieber, NYCT President Demetrius Crichlow, and Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara unveil a major redesign to the New York City Subway Map at Times Sq-42 St on Wednesday, Apr 2, 2025. Marc A. Hermann/MTA. CC licence.

A complete New York City Subway map from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Apr 1

New post: Seafloor Features Mapped by Satellite www.maproomblog.com/2025/04/seaf...

A map of the world showing the vertical gravity gradient on the ocean floor. The gradient is used to model seafloor topography. NASA Earth Observatory/SWOT.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Mar 31

New post: World of Maps Owners Retiring, Seeking New Owners www.maproomblog.com/2025/03/worl...

A photo of the World of Maps storefront in a snowy day in Ottawa on 27 November 2017.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Mar 19

Membership drive update! We’re now past the halfway point and more than halfway there. Just seven more paid members by the end of the month and we make the goal—and paid members get to see my presentation on fantasy maps. www.maproomblog.com/2025/03/pled... www.patreon.com/jonathancrowe

A selection of slides from my 2019 presentation, “The Territory is Not the Map: Exploring the Fantasy Map Style.” The slide at left outlines the talk: 1. What we talk about when we talk about fantasy maps; 2. What fantasy maps look like; 3. The origins of the fantasy map style; 4. The implications of the fantasy map style. The slide at right has an inset of the Tabula Peutingeriana and has the title 'A Pseudomedieval aesthetic'. Bullet points: - A purely medieval aesthetic would not be understood by modern fantasy readers - A purely modern map would be rejected as anachronistic - Result: A modern map that looks and feels like an old map, but isn't.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Mar 18

Two new posts! Mapping the University of Chicago’s Expansion into Its Surrounding Neighbourhoods www.maproomblog.com/2025/03/mapp... A New Map of the Land Beneath Antarctica’s Ice www.maproomblog.com/2025/03/a-ne...

An elevation map showing the topography of Antarctica underneath its ice sheet. Polar projection centred on the South Pole. Colour. From Pritchard et al., Bedmap3 updated ice bed, surface and thickness gridded datasets for Antarctica. Sci Data 12, 414 (2025).

The Map Room@maproomblog· Mar 17

Two new posts! Apple Maps Surveyor www.maproomblog.com/2025/03/appl... The Trouble with Inflight Maps www.maproomblog.com/2025/03/the-...

A screenshot of Maps Surveyor from the Apple App Store

The Map Room@maproomblog· Mar 12

Two new posts: Google Maps Has a Lot of User-Contributed Imagery in the Wrong Places www.maproomblog.com/2025/03/goog... Multispectral Imaging Comes to a 15th Century Portolan Chart www.maproomblog.com/2025/03/mult...

The 1452 mappa mundi by Giovanni Leardo held in the collection of the American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Feb 17

New post! ‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance www.maproomblog.com/2025/02/gulf...

A screenshot from Apple Maps, showing how the Gulf of Mexico is labelled as Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).

A user-generated map of the Gulf of Mexico from Mapquest’s gulfof.mapquest.com tool, labelling the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Compliance in Advance.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Feb 11

Three new posts! 1. Turkish Museum of Cartography www.maproomblog.com/2025/02/turk... 2. Google and the Gulf www.maproomblog.com/2025/02/goog... 3. Paranneaux Globes www.maproomblog.com/2025/02/para...

A screenshot from Google Maps showing the Gulf of Mexico labelled as 'Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)'

An image from the Paranneaux Globes website, showing a selection of small sculpted globes on metal stands.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Jan 30

New post: More reactions to ‘Gulf of America’: www.maproomblog.com/2025/01/more... So help me, this is my third post on the subject. Previously: Naming the Gulf www.maproomblog.com/2025/01/nami... Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’—Others Not So Much www.maproomblog.com/2025/01/goog...

Detail from Mercator, Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate (1569), showing the Gulf of Mexico labelled as 'Golfo Mexicano' 456 years ago. Wikimedia Commons.

The Map Room@maproomblog· Jan 29

Kathleen Jennings Shows Us How She Draws a Fantasy Map www.maproomblog.com/2025/01/kath...