----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >I remember a number of years ago reading an old Czech tale about a patrol >of soldiers out in some mountains in the snow, and getting lost. They >panicked, and their leader calmed them by producing a map. They found their >way to safety and, in the pub, asked to look at this wonderful document. >He showed them a map of a completely different mountain range than the one >that they were in. > I recall reading a newspaper item about some mountaineers falling down a cliff in the Ural mountains that was not on the map in Russia right after the breaking up of the USSR. Deliberate distortion of the geographical truth seemed to be common pratice in the East Block Socialist Countries. A very shocking experience I had lately was a map that somehow managed to reach our institute that represents the actual graveness of the cold war. It is a town plan of the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands (my city) in a high graphical quality, printed in many colours. When seen on the wall it just looks like an ordanary town plan of our city. Only when you look up close you will notice an important difference: all text elements in the map, toponyms as well as the marginal information are in the cyrilic alphabet. This is a Russian millitary map made for action in the field. All military installations are plotted to a very high degree of detail in a conspicuous colour. All measures the topo-service of the Netherlands took and takes to deny us citizens the knowledge of the location of millitary objects on topographical maps and aerial photographs becomes a farce instantly. When one thinks about this map and the fact that a map like this must exsist (and kept up to date) of all major and minor cities of Europe we can only guess what size the cartographic effort was that the Soviets put into getting geographical intelligence of there adversaries. Once again I, as a cartographer, am confronted with the dilemma in cartography that advancement in technology and volume of cartographic ouput are in many cases linked to (potential) warfare. Once the treat of war is over, this cartographic potential usually shrivels down to trivial sizes. =============================================== Olev Koop E-Mail: [log in to unmask] Cartography Section Phone : +31 30 531379 Faculty of Geographic Sciences Fax : +31 30 540604 Utrecht University PO Box 80.115 3508 TC Utrecht The Netherlands ===============================================