Date: September 16, 1982
Title: The Paleogeographic Atlas Project with Computer Animation of Continental Motion
Speakers: Christopher Scotese and Arthur Ziegler, University of Chicago
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

In what is arguably the ultimate historical atlas, Mr. Scotese and his colleagues are engaged in mapping the world over the past 580 million years. Mr. Scotese will review the kinds of evidence used for this reconstruction and will show two computer-generated, animated map films illustrating continental drift.

Date: October 21, 1982
Title: Beyond the Cassini Map: French Engineers as Cartographers in the 18th Century
Speaker: Josef Konvitz, Professor of History, Michigan State University
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Prof. Konvitz will discuss and show slides of many manuscript maps from French archives relating to the making of the Cassini map and maps made and used by French engineers in their military and civilian work. In addition, he will show a series of maps, made on the eve of the Revolution at France’s elite engineering school, which are visionary images of how France might look in the future.

Date: November 18, 1982
Title: Captain John Smith and the Pilgrims: The Cartographic Connection
Speaker: John H. Long, Project Supervisor, United States Historical County Boundary Data File Project, The Newberry Library
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

In this special program for Thanksgiving, John Long will examine the role played by maps, especially the maps published by John Smith, in the Pilgrim’s journey to Plymouth. He will examine such questions as “What maps did the Pilgrims have?,” “Why did they end up in New England when aiming for New York?,” and “Were the Pilgrims the victims of a conspiracy?” The talk will be illustrated with slides of contemporary maps.

Date: December 9, 1982
Title: The Cartography of Imperialism: Mackinder and Geopolitik
Speaker: David Peirce, Harvard University
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Sir Halford Mackinder summed up his most important theory in the saying “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the World.” It remained for the Third Reich to develop Mackinder’s ideas into a full-blown discipline called Geopolitik and to attempt a demonstration of the Heartland theory. Mr. Peirce will examine and illustrate some of the cartographic expressions of these early “global” geographers.

A buffet dinner will follow tonight’s talk.

Date: January 21, 1983
Title: Rand McNally & Company: An Examination of Map Distribution and Marketing Techniques in the Late Nineteenth Century
Speaker: J Cynthia Peters, Reference Librarian, The Newberry Library
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Drawing on her University of Chicago thesis, Map Society member Cynthia Peters will present a more hidden side of cartographic history, concerned with the financial, technical, and marketing expertise that made Rand McNally & Co. a household word. She will trace the links between the new technologies, changing market strategies, and the labor force, illustrating her talk with slides of key Rand McNally products.

Date: February 17, 1983
Title: Lewis and Clark’s Road Maps
Speaker: W. Raymond Wood, Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri – Columbia
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Professor Wood, an anthropologist and authority on the early mapping of the Missouri River Valley, will discuss the cartographic sources available to Lewis and Clark for the first year of their expedition, from St. Louis to Fort Mandan. His talk will be profusely illustrated with slides.

Date: March 21, 1983
Title: Historical County Atlases and the American Dream: A Perfect Nineteenth-Century Symbiosis.
Speaker: Michael Conzen, Department of Geography, The University of Chicago and NEH Fellow, The Newberry Library
Location: Library Main Reading Room, The Newberry Library

Date: March 24, 1983
Title: Spanish and French Mapping of the Gulf Coast to 1720
Speaker: David Buisseret, Director, Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, The Newberry Library
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Dr. Buisseret, Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry will discuss the formative period in the cartography of the Gulf Coast. Among other topics, he will reconsider the evidence for the mistaken location of the mouth of the Mississippi River seen on several early maps. His talk will be illustrated by slides.

Date: April 7, 1983
Title: Kalóyeros: A Mystery of the Aegean Sea
Speaker: W. Sidney Allen, Trinity College, Cambridge
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Kalóyeros, a tiny islet in the Aegean Sea, was the home during the Middle Ages of two monks, who maintained a chapel there and had a small boat which could be pulled up into the rocks. The island was shown on many maps, including the earliest portolans, until the 17th century, when it disappears. Illustrating his talk with many slides of the cartographic evidence, Prof. Allen will unravel the mystery of this “Atlantis in microcosm.”

Date: April 25, 1983
Title: Amerindian Maps: Early Euroamerican Misuse of a Geographic Information System
Speaker: G. Malcolm Lewis, Senior Lecturer in Geography, University of Sheffield
Location: Fourth Floor Conference Room, The Newberry Library

Date: May 26, 1983
Title: Computer Mapping Using 1980 GBF/DIME Files with an Application to Business and Marketing Research
Speaker: Donald Luman, Professor of Geography, Northern Illinois University
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

Using the 1980 GBF/DIME file for the Peoria, Illinois metropolitan region, Dr. Luman geocoded and line-plotted the data for a large private company and produced color choropleth maps at the census block level. He will describe the procedures developed for handling these computerized files at the census block level, and for producing high quality, low cost, line-plotted maps. The ways in which corporate planners can use such maps as marketing tools will also be discussed.