The Chicago Map Society was organized in early 1976, and it immediately began to hold meetings at the Newberry Library on the third Thursday of each month. After the election of the Society’s first Board of Directors in the fall of 1976, it was decided to adopt a program year that generally coincided with the standard academic year (September to May). The first six months of the Society’s 1976 programs are listed here.

Date: February 26, 1976
Title: The Ancient Cartography of Angola and Mozambique
Speaker: Capt. A. Teixeira Da Mota, Director, National Maritime Library of Portugal, Lisbon
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Date: March 18, 1976
Title: A Perfect and Absolute Blank: or, What’s the Use of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators?
Speaker: David Woodward, Director, Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, The Newberry Library
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Date: April 29, 1976
Title: Never in my wildest dreams! The Cartography of the Atlas of Early American History
Speaker: Barbara Bartz Petchenik, Cartographic Services, R. R. Donnelley & Sons
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Barbara Petchenik was cartographic editor of the Atlas of Early American History from 1970-1975 as part of a team of six historians and two cartographers. They produced this monumental original work that is to be published by Princeton University Press in June 1976.

Date: May 27, 1976
Title: Mapping from Space
Speaker: Martin Cassidy, Senior Staff Geologist, Amoco International Oil Company
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Date: June 24, 1976
Title: Mental Maps: Images of Chicago
Speaker: Gary Fowler, Professor of Geography, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle
Location: The Map Room, The Newberry Library

Date: July 24, 1976
Title: Visit to a private collection of maps and books, with an emphasis on the Great Lakes region
Speaker: Hermon Dunlap Smith, Host
Location: Lake Forest, Illinois