The 1970 Census was the first United States decennial census to be released in machine-readable format, allowing cartographers sudden access to large amounts of aggregated demographic data about the entire United States. This blog post explores early computer cartography mapping techniques that took advantage of the new census format, including SYMAP and SYMVU, as demonstrated in an atlas held by the Geography & Map Division titled “The Puget Sound Region: A Portfolio of Thematic Computer Maps.”
Around 200 million years ago, the supercontinent of Pangaea began to break apart into the continents we know today. This post will explore the discovery of this continental drift theory through maps in the Library’s collections.
The production of distilled spirits, especially whiskey, has been an economic asset of the United States since the earliest days of the republic. Battles, sometimes literally as in the case of the Whiskey Rebellion, erupted at times over how to regulate and tax distillers. Over the course of the 19th century, Congress acted and other industries stepped in to help with the regulation, leading to maps of whiskey production elements such as bonded warehouses, which appear prominently on some Sanborn fire insurance maps.
A fascinating 1787 map serves as a cartographic launching point for exploring the unique history of Belize and how the region’s lush forests drew the interest of colonial powers.
This blog post from the Geography & Map Division explores illustrated comics created by US federal government agencies to introduce the public to new geographic data technologies and file formats in the late 20th century.
