Date: September 14, 1989
Title: Newsmaps in the Civil War
Speaker: David C. Bosse, Curator, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library
Besides ushering in new means of destruction and a new era in American history, the Civil War also witnessed a revolution in the gathering and dissemination of war news. The railroad and the telegraph helped to speed dispatches from the front, and high-speed presses helped publishers reach unprecedented numbers of readers. Newsmaps were an integral part of this reportage, and Mr. Bosse will trace for us the fascinating story of the production and distribution of these maps, which numbered in the thousands, and which set new standards for timely cartographic reporting of news.
Date: September 22, 1989
Title: New World of the Americas: European Perspectives of the 16th through 18th Centuries
Speaker: Herman E. Bender, Historian and Collector, America Septen History Company
Location: Chicago Maritime Museum, North Pier Chicago: Slip Level, East End, 455 East Illinois Street, Chicago
Herman Bender will discuss how the Europeans viewed the “New World” of the Americas. The presentation with slides is based on maps, prints, and books he has collected during the past fifteen years. These original materials date from the 16th and into the 19th century. They include English, German, Latin, French, Russian, and Italian atlases, books, and journals. Many of the original printed works together with pertinent examples of artifacts will be on display.
This program was presented by The Chicago Maritime Society and Technischer Verelnz Technical Society of Chicago in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Chicago and the Chicago Map Society.
Date: October 19, 1989
Title: What’s Wrong with the National Topographic Map?
Speaker: David Woodward, Professor of Geography, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library
We’ve all used the topographic maps produced by the U.S. Geological Survey, and those who use them a lot are likely to have strong opinions about the product. David Woodward, one of the founders of our society and both a working cartographer and historian of cartography, turns his attention to a searching critique of the topographic maps of the U.S.G.S. His talk will be profusely illustrated.
Date: November 30, 1989
Title: Teaching American History through Maps
Speaker: Jerry Danzer, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Chicago
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library
Jerry Danzer has devoted his career to developing interesting and innovative ways to teach history in the secondary schools of the land. One of his major tools is the map, and he has become so closely associated with map study, as the editor of atlases and through his research on the history of cartography, that many people think he’s a geographer. Recently, Jerry has developed a new map series for Scott, Foresman that uses maps, both old and new, to teach American history, and he’ll give us an overview of the series and in-depth analysis of several of the maps.
Date: December 14, 1989
Title: How Not to Collect Maps
Speaker: George Ritzlin, President, Chicago Map Society
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library
Our annual holiday meeting will feature a catered dinner, wine and sparkling cider bar, and our President, George Ritzlin, speaking on “How Not to Collect Maps.”
Date: January 18, 1990
Title: Vive La Différence! Changing Styles in Historical Atlases
Speaker: John Long, Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, The Newberry Library
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library
Date: February 15, 1990
Title: Color, Cartography, and Commerce: French Experiments in Color Printing in the 18th Century
Speaker: Mary Pedley, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library
Ever since the three-color woodcut map of Lorraine done for the 1513 edition of Ptolemy, map printers have been struggling to get color on their maps mechanically. During the heyday of copper engraving in the eighteenth century, several French printers began to experiment with the printing of multiple colors from copper plates. Mary Pedley had located a number of examples of these rare experiments, used for both maps and other kinds of illustrations, and will discuss the techniques involved and the reasons for the failure of these methods to become more common. Her talk will be illustrated with slides, and one or two examples from the Newberry’s collections will be on display.
Date: March 15, 1990
Title: Three Profiles: Women in North American Cartography
Speaker: Mary Michael Ritzlin
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library
Name five women cartographers. “De Jode, De l’Isle, Hondius, Jansson, and Vissher.” Correct! All of these ladies, and a great many others, published maps under their own names after their husbands’ deaths. This was the typical entrée into the trades for women before the twentieth century, but women have also been map designers, engravers, print sellers, and colorists, not to mention the powers behind the pens that drew. Mary Ritzlin, a founding member of the Society, has been researching this topic for a number of years, and she will share with us the stories of three women, Mary Biddle, Elizabeth Simcoe, and Emma Hart Willard, who left their marks (literally and figuratively) on the mapping of North America.
Date: April 19, 1990
Title: “On a round ball . . .”: The Making and Use of Terrestrial and Celestial Globes in England
Speaker: Helen Wallis, Map Librarian at the British Library (retired)
Location: Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library
The name of Dr. Helen Wallis, who retired as Map Librarian at the British Library in 1986, has become almost synonymous with the study of old maps. Her publications are numerous and important and treat many map types and many regions of the world, but always she comes back to her first love, English globes, an area in which she is the undisputed expert. English mathematicians and cartographers were crucially important to English exploration and the expansion of the empire, and as it was the first truly global empire, globes played a particularly vital role, which Dr. Wallis will describe and illustrate for us.
Date: May 10, 1990
Title: The Mapping of the Great Lakes in the Seventeenth Century
Speaker: Kevin Kaufman, Research Associate, The History of Cartography Project, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Location: Room 180, The Newberry Library
The Mapping of the Great Lakes in the Seventeenth Century is a portfolio of maps recently published by the John Carter Brown Library, to which Kevin Kaufman wrote the introduction and commentary.
This was a joint meeting of the Chicago Map Society and the Chicago Maritime Society.