The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

A Diagrammatic Photograph Showing The American Warship, The Delaware, Blowing Up New York City
|| 10/31/2009 || 1:20 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Scan of the front page of New York Tribune on Sunday, October 31st, 1909 showing the battleship Delaware firing on American targets

Talk about a scary Halloween! This graphic features a new American warship, the Delaware, bombing New York City. The transcription is as follows:

The New York Tribune, Sunday, October 31st, 1909

TWELVE-MILE RANGE OVER WHICH OUR NEW DREADNOUGHT COULD SCATTER DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

Besides demonstrating last week, by attaining a speed 21.98 knots, that she is the fastest first class battleship ever made, the Delaware has the most powerful battery in the service. From each of her ten 12-inch guns of the largest type she can throw a shell weighing 870 pounds to a distance of twelve miles, or from below the Narrows, down the Bay, into City Hall Park, and a little beyond. After traversing 9,000 yards these shells can still penetrate eleven inches of solid steel.

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[FOUND MAP] The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, The Younger (1533)
|| 10/30/2009 || 3:51 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Close up detail of The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger showing a map of Europe around 1533

Upside down detail of the terrestrial globe in The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, The Younger

The Ambassadors (1533) is a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger in the National Gallery in London. I remember first learning about it in my AP Art History class in High School. I was drawn to both the intricate nature of the painting‘s near-photorealism and the anamorphic skull that obstructs the foreground. Today I was attempting to warp the skull to see it properly rendered and I realized that there was a nicely painted globe in the background. Well, actually, there is a lot more than just a globe in the background of this painting– there is also a beautiful celestial globe and numerous scientific instruments, but I will let you explore the painting on your own. Suffice it to say, this painting remains one of my favorites.

Randle Highlands VS Fort Dupont [Antique Overlay of an Anacostia Alternative Future]
|| 10/29/2009 || 4:07 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Screen grab from Google Earth showing the location of Randle Highlands

Image links to the KMZ file for Google Earth

The other day I was canvassing the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America newspaper collection and came across this advertisement that was published on May 27th, 1910 in the Washington Times. It shows development plans for Randle Highlands, a neighborhood in Southeast, Washington, DC. I was curious about the results of the newspaper ad. As in, how much has the map changed in the last 99 years? Surprisingly, not too much. Most of the land was developed to plan, except for one large chunk of the land that remains “undeveloped” to this day: Fort Dupont Park.

The National Park Service website says:

This particular fort had six sides, each 100 feet long, protected by a deep moat and trees felled side-by-side with branches pointing outward. It was named for Flag Officer Samuel F. du Pont, who commanded the naval victory at Port Royal, South Carolina, in November 1861.

Although its garrison and guns never saw battle, Fort Dupont served as a lifeline of freedom. Runaway slaves found safety here before moving on to join the growing community of “contrabands” in Washington. The barracks and guns are gone, but the fort’s earthworks can still be traced near the picnic area on Alabama Avenue.

In the 1930s, the National Capital Planning Commission acquired the old fort and surrounding land for recreation. An 18-hole golf course was constructed. As the city grew, golf gave way in 1970 to the sports complex along Ely Place that now includes tennis and basketball courts, athletic fields, and a softball diamond. An indoor ice rink offers skating all winter. Where once the Civil War fort looked out over farmlands, city dwellers now grow vegetables in community garden plots.

This advertisement was printed 20 years before the National Capital Planning Commission changed the future of this neighborhood. I wonder what it would be like today if it wasn’t a park? Umm, I mean golf course. I was able to line up the old map with the contemporary imagery and by adjusting the transparency in Google Earth you can see how much has been developed. Click here to download the KMZ file for Google Earth

Screen grab from Google Earth showing the location of present day Fort Dupont Park

Image links to Google Maps

Transcription below:

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[FOUND MAP] The Masthead Map of the San Mateo Item Newspaper
|| 10/23/2009 || 7:55 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Click image above to view in full resolution
Click here to view the entire page

As I mentioned previously, this week I’ve been exploring the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers archive. Last night I came up with the idea that I could create an entirely new blog dedicated to showing news from exactly 100 years ago. Dubbed “The Hundred Year Old News Blog,” each entry would be a newspaper article from exactly 100 years ago and to test the theory, I decided to see what today’s blog entry would have been. To my surprise, I found that the now-defunct newspaper called the San Mateo Item used a map of eastern Florida for it’s masthead.

According to the entry in Chronicling America:

The San Mateo Item began publishing in 1891. F.A. Bailey was one of its early editors. The paper periodically appeared under the title of the Item. It is unknown when the San Mateo Item finally ceased publication, but holdings are reported in the Putnam County Archives for 1913.

San Mateo is located in Putnam County in northeastern Florida. The area sustained various agricultural activities about which the San Mateo Item reported. San Mateo was also well known for its recreational opportunities, having more than a thousand ponds and lakes and approximately one hundred miles of access to the St. Johns River, especially attractive to bass fishermen. Sporting activities were of sufficient note to merit coverage by the British press. The Outing, a London sports magazine, complained in its 1891-92 issue that the Item had reprinted one of its articles without credit. The Outing asserted that its enterprise was dedicated in part to distributing “articles likely to attract the sportsman to Florida.” Apparently, San Mateo was worth watching.

Currently there is not a Wikipedia entry for San Mateo Item newspaper

What is interesting about the map is that its presented in a East to West configuration instead of the modern North to South configuration. Starting from the right side of the map going left, you trace Florida’s longest river, St. Johns River, north towards Jacksonville, and near the middle you have the newspaper’s namesake, San Mateo.

The map shows the following towns, lakes, and railroads (roughly South/Right to North/Left):

Sanford
Lake Monroe (Shown, but not listed)
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (Listed as A. C. L. R. R.)
Lake George
Crescent City
Crescent Lake (Now known as Lake Crescent)
Daytona (Renamed Daytona Beach in 1926 after the merger of the towns Seabreze and Daytona Beach)
Ormond (Renamed Ormond Beach in 1949)
Florida East Coast Railway
Welaka
San Mateo
Palatka
East Palatka
Hastings
Federal Point
St. Augustine (Founded in 1565, it is the oldest continuously occupied European established city, and the oldest port, in the continental United States)
Green Cove Springs
Pablo (Changed to Jacksonville Beach in 1925)
Atlantic Beach
Mayport
Jacksonville

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Map of Teacher Starting Salary vs. Annual Amount Spent on Inmates
|| 9/23/2009 || 11:50 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

I found this map through a friend’s link on Facebook. It shows how each state pays it’s new teachers compared to the amount that each state spends on each inmate. I was quite surprised to see the variance in starting pay throughout the United States.

In summary:

Alabama is the only state to pay their new teachers $20,000 more than what is spent on each inmate
23 states pay their new teachers $10,000 – $19,999 more than what is spent on each inmate
6 states pay their new teachers $5,000 – $9,999 more than what is spent on each inmate
8 states pay their new teachers $2,000-$2,999 more than what is spent on each inmate
6 states pay their new teachers about the same that is spent on each inmate (+/- $1,999)
Massachusetts & Oregon spend $2,000-$2,999 more on each inmate than each new teacher
Wisconsin spends $3,000-$3,999 more on each inmate than each new teacher
Rhode Island spends $4,000-$4,999 more on each inmate than each new teacher
Maine & Minnesota spend $5,000 more on each inmate than each new teacher

Fortunately, more states (38) pay their new teachers more than inmates. But the larger issues comes to my mind. Do these inmates even belong in jail? Are they being incarcerated due to a non-violent crime? Conversely, do violent criminals need more attention and therefore more money needs to be spent on them? Should we, as a society, be paying our new teachers more money in order to prevent people from not receiving a complete education, resorting to crime, and ending up in jail? I will not attempt to answer these questions, but I will say that America has more people incarcerated than any other country in the world and I hope this changes.

*The District of Columbia is excluded from this map

Map Tattoo: The State of Maryland
|| 9/9/2009 || 2:15 am || + Render A Comment || ||

Tattoo in the shape of the State of Maryland

I always try to take photographs of any maps I happen to come across. The other day I was at a friends house and noticed this tattoo of the State of Maryland. View the other two photos:

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“NO” – Found Cartographic Typography
|| 8/28/2009 || 4:44 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Photograph of two framed maps spelling out the word NO in my hallway

I have a quite a few framed maps hanging in my house just waiting to be purchased. In fact, I have more framed maps than I have available wall space. Usually before we have a big party I go around the house and rearrange the framed maps so our guests see different maps each time they visit. The other night when I was walking up the stairs I noticed that the two maps that I’ve had up for a months actually spelled something. The N from N Prague and the torus around Georgetown Lenz #2 kind of spell out the word NO. I wonder if guests saw this? Or if it could have been construed as a subliminal message?

Below are the maps as they appeared in their original blog entries:

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Map of the Indigenous Languages of North America
|| 8/25/2009 || 5:01 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Map Created by Wikipedia User ish ishwar in 2005, using the GIMP software.
Click to view original map.

I came across this map of the Indigenous Languages of North America the other night and it reminded me of my previous entry related to the map of the languages of Europe.

According to the Wikipedia entry on the map:

about sources

Map redrawn and modified primary based on two maps by cartographer Roberta Bloom appearing in Mithun (1999:xviii-xxi). Incidentally, these maps are very derivative of the Driver map of the 1950s-60s (which means that, although published in 1999, it is not as up-to-date as one might think). The other main source used is the up-to-date and very well-done map found in Goddard (1996), which was revised as Goddard (1999). Essentially, Bloom’s map was used for the projection and general outline of language borders while Goddard’s maps were used to adjust Bloom’s borders to reflect the more recent research.
Additional references include Sturtevant (1978-present), Mithun (1999:606-616), and Campbell (1997:353-376). Mithun and Campbell have several maps based on the maps found in Sturtevant (1978-present) and Bright (1992).

about map content

— Map delineates each language family in a unique color.
— Language isolates are all in dark grey, e.g. Chitimacha (#7) is an isolate in Louisiana. This is not meant to imply any relationship among them whatsoever. All isolates are assigned a number and listed on the right side of map.
Unclassified languages (i.e. #1 Beothuk, #4 Calusa, #8 Adai, #10 Karankawa, #12 Aranama, #15 Solano, #19 Esselen, #26 Cayuse) are in light grey and are also assigned a number and listed with the isolates on the right. (Unclassified languages in the case of North America are unclassified because there is not sufficient data to determine genealogical relationship.)
— Areas in white are either
1. uninhabited (in Alaska, Canada, Greenland),
2. unknown (due to early extinction and little or no data; this is mostly in the East), or
3. outside of subject area (in Mexico). (note that Seri (#17) is included because it is usually considered part of the Southwest culture area and also included in various Hokan phylum proposals.)
— This is a historical map: Although most languages are still spoken in North America, the extent of their distribution has been profoundly affected by European contact — many languages have become extinct (sometimes including even the peoples).
— Language areas are those at earliest time of European contact, as far as can be determined. Since contact occurred at different times in different areas, no historical Native American maps of the entire continent are of a single time period.
Language areas are not as well-defined as this map would suggest: borders are often fuzzy and arbitrary and the entire language area may not be fully occupied by language speakers.
— Na-Dene here is Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit, excluding Haida (#28).
— The following groupings are disputed by some (or are considered not fully demonstrated):
1. Plateau Penutian (aka Shahapwailutan) = Klamath-Modoc (isolate) + Molala (isolate) + Sahaptian (family). Sometimes Cayuse (#26) is included in Plateau Penutian, but this language is not very well documented and is now extinct. Thus, it is considered unclassified here.
2. Yuki-Wappo = Yuki (isolate) + Wappo (isolate).

Note: Since I inverted the color scheme when publishing this map, the white is black and the grey is still grey.

What struck me about this map was how many languages were spoken in North America before European colonization. I’m curious about how similar and dissimilar some of the languages were to each other, but alas, I can never hear all of them now. When it comes to the spatial proximity of the language isolates with languages of larger tribes, I’m curious as to how these languages were able to remain linguistically different. While some tribes travelled each year between summer and winter cities, I would imagine that there was some interaction- either through peaceful trade or warfare. Sadly, most of that information has been lost, but I’m glad some researchers have taken the time to attempt to draw the map above.

Related Found Maps:

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Groupon.com is illegally using my map “DC Stencil” for a Facebook advertisement
|| 8/10/2009 || 6:09 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Screen grab from Facebook showing my map DC Stencil being used without my permission -- click to see full size

Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image

About 15 minutes ago I visited my Profile Page on Facebook and noticed a familiar map of mine was being used without my authorization:

DC Stecnil by Nikolas Schiller - created August 22nd, 2005

My website’s Fair Use policy states “For any intended commercial use of content on this website, I request that you contact me so that we can arrange appropriate compensation.” There was no effort to contact me before using my map in the advertisement and had they chosen to contact me, I would have requested some form of compensation. I decided to report the advertisement to Facebook:

Screen grab from Facebook showing my map DC Stencil being used without my permission and my message to Facebook as to why the ad should be removed-- click to see full size

Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image
(Yes I am aware of the grammatical error!)

I also sent the company, which I am purposely not linking to in this entry, a polite cease and desist e-mail asking them to either take down the advertisement or pay me and I sent out a tweet linking to this entry. Maybe I should pursue further action? Let’s see how they respond…

UPDATE – A few minutes after I sent my Tweet, I received the following responses:

Twitter replies about the illegal Facebook ad

Later in the evening I noticed that they merely changed the graphic and kept the original ad:

Screen grab from Facebook showing the same ad with a new graphic-- click to see full size

Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image

Makes me wonder if they are using someone else’s image illegally?

UPDATE – This morning I received this e-mail:

So I get to BUG him about a $10 coupon after my copyright was violated? That ad was probably seen by thousands of people! What a crock.

UPDATE – August 12th, 2009 – I decided to do some sleuthing and found that the image that Groupon.com replaced my image with was also a copyrighted image! Using the website TinEye.com I was able to eventually trace their current image to this blog entry. I contacted the copyright holder and he said that he had not given them permission to use his photograph either….

[Found Maps] License Plate Maps of DC & Maryland at Artomatic 2009
|| 7/23/2009 || 9:15 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

On the last day of Artomatic 2009 I decided to traverse all 9 floors and come up with a Top 100 similar to the one I made last year. While I haven’t posted my Top 100 of Artomatic 2009 yet and frankly I am still debating on whether I’ll go through the task of coding it all, I did, however, find some maps by Ian Bird that I wasn’t expecting.

While there are already other people who make License Plate Maps, I like the nuanced detail of his maps (above). Unlike the other license plate map artists, I sincerely doubt they have made a map that cartographically shows each of the eight wards of Washington, DC as well as each county in the state of Maryland. No matter what, Ian Bird is definitely going into the Top 100 (if I ever post it).

Related Found Maps:

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Nikolas Schiller is a second-class American citizen living in America's last colony, Washington, DC. This blog is my on-line repository of what I have created or found on-line since May of 2004. If you have any questions or comments, please contact: