Ink asked:
I was just watching antiques roadshow when a gentleman brought in a world atlas from the early 1800′s but the part that boggles my mind is that it has a very detailed map of the world and all the continents looked the same as the maps today taken by satellite. how could they accurately map out the world to give an aerial perspective without even being to space or having a satellite that gives them accurate pictures?
Miller’s Antiques Encyclopedia
I was just watching antiques roadshow when a gentleman brought in a world atlas from the early 1800′s but the part that boggles my mind is that it has a very detailed map of the world and all the continents looked the same as the maps today taken by satellite. how could they accurately map out the world to give an aerial perspective without even being to space or having a satellite that gives them accurate pictures?
Miller’s Antiques Encyclopedia
Tags: Aerial Perspective, Gentleman, Satellite Map
3 users commented in " this just boggles my mind, how could they do this? "
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Well, we have no idea now because the technology they used to design these maps are relatively obsolete. I’m sure you could find out if you really wanted to.
Book-collecting as a hobby: In a series of letters to everyman
By the 1800s, reliable navigation methods had been put into use. So, it was a lot easier to accurately plot the location of features in relation to the known location of the ship/research party. You can’t map something accurately from ground-level (or sea-level) without having a good idea of your own location. In earlier times, inferior navigation meant that it was almost impossible to be precise about one’s own location, so it was even more difficult to try to plot what they saw on a map since they didn’t have an accurate way of knowing where to put it.
Miller’s Antiques Handbook and Price Guide 2010-2011
The same way you could draw an accurate map of your neighborhood, without flying over it. The people back then traveled around, and made careful drawings of what they saw and where they saw it.
By the late 1770′s, ship navigators could figure their locations pretty accurately. So Captain Cook (for example) could sail around the Pacific, and when he discovered a new island, could draw its location on his maps. And other ships could do the same for other coast lines. Since locations of these things are very important for ships and empire-builders, the maps were copied a lot.
About the only major coast lines that weren’t well mapped by 1830′s were Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean.
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