Cartography 1950-2000

Abstract

The authors review the changes that have taken place in cartography since 1950 and hazard guesses regarding future developments. These are occurring on a base of technological innovations, primarily in photogrammetry and plastics, and a sudden increase in interest in cartography, largely a consequence of the Second World War. Cartography has emerged by 1976 into an identifiable scholarly and scientific field in contrast to its status 50 years earlier. It exhibits a generally accepted need, an up-to-date technology, and a body of scholarly literature. As this growth has occurred, so has argument regarding the essential character of the field: whether science, art, or both. Thematic cartography has burgeoned since 1950, and concern for the map user has led to increasing research in cartographic design and investigations of the theoretical side of the field. Technological developments since 1950 have been revolutionary; computers, electronic devices, and sophisticated spacecraft innovations are having profound effects. Many of the time-consuming aspects of cartography are now readily done with computer-plotter methods. Data acquisition methods have enormously increased the available information, and the cartographer is now intimately involved in the whole procedure. Remote sensing applications seem likely to be as far reaching as the new orthophotomap and there seems no limit to what may come about as a consequence of data banks and interactive practices. Institutionally, cartography has shown enormous growth since 1950. Nearly 30 societies and over 40 journals have come into being, most of them since 1950. Cartography has become an accepted academic subject at all levels. REVIEWING the past and forecasting what may lie ahead is presumably a salutary exercise but like bodily exercise its main advantage is to keep one in trim. In this case the professional wellbeing is a gain in understanding of the chronological context in which a large number of changes are taking place. The field of cartography has been subjected to continuous and rapid innovation since the Second World War which has promoted, among other things, an increasing specialization within the field. It becomes steadily more difficult for the specialist to comprehend where his activities fit into the larger discipline and especially the metamorphosis of which he is a part. We try to review objectively the changes that have occurred since about 1950 and, because watching a pattern of change invites extrapolation, we hazard a guess as to developments from 1975 to 2000. Reviewing anything is a very personal process, and we are quite conscious that our assessments must be biased as well as necessarily incomplete. Also prediction in human affairs is notoriously unreliable and our oracular pronouncements are without divine guidance. Indeed, it is especially possible that they may be fallible because cartography is a field characterized by uncommon inventiveness, and map making is quite likely to be turned topsy-turvy by some unanticipated development. For example, even such an astute student as Wright (1942) should be forgiven for asserting only a little more than thirty years ago that 'Maps are drawn by men and not turned out by machines.. .'. In 1942 pen and ink was standard procedure and computerautomated map making was unheard of. A brief review of developments up to 1950 is in order as a backdrop against which to look at