A FIFTY-YEARS RETROSPECT

Abstract

The International Map of the World.—Officially known as the Carte du Monde au Millionième, this undertaking has the following history. At the International Geographical Congress which was held at Bern in 1891, Professor Dr. Albrecht Penck proposed the construction, by all the nations of the world, of an International Map on the scale of 1 to 1 million. This idea was unanimously approved, and a very sketchy outline was roughed out for its prosecution. Of this outline the chief item that has survived is the size of the sheets, which were to be six degrees in longitude by four in latitude. Well, time passed and nothing much happened. Year after year there were a few murmurs at congresses about the map, and a few, a very few, sheets were printed, some by Section “F” of the British War Office. There was no general organization to look after the prosecution of the map, and there were no adequate regulations for its construction. Generally speaking, the official map-making institutions were out of touch with the scheme, and geographical societies and congresses had no money and no power to carry it out.