Staying on top of the -ography in a digital age

July 17, 2017 9:55 AM

It wasn't displayed to the public with its pages open until 2010, but now the 1660 Klencke Atlas - one of the world's largest books, measuring 1.76 m by 2.31 metres when open - has been digitized and is now available for viewing online from the British Library. Watch a timelapse video showing how curators and imaging technicians photographed it (the Klencke Atlas, previously). This is part of the library's ongoing project to catalogue and digitize King George III's topographical collection of over 30,000 maps and views - with the goal of having it available online in 2018. Meanwhile, the library has a parallel project called Transforming Topography underway, which is examining the role of topography in historical scholarship.

More from the British Library:

The Klencke Atlas

The King George III Topographical Collection

Cartographic perspectives from our Map Librarians: Maps and Views blog

Sharing stories from the past, worldwide: Untold Lives blog

Picturing Places, "a free educational resource providing unprecedented access to the British Library’s topography."

posted by mandolin conspiracy (9 comments total)

this is so freaking rad. Thank you for sharing.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:05 AM on July 17, 2017

the 1660 Klencke Atlas - one of the world's largest books, measuring 1.76 m by 2.31 metres when open - has been digitized

But I've only got an 8.9 cm iPhone 4! So, let's see ... the iPhone 7 is 11.9 cm ... OK, so: to even OPEN this Atlas I'd need at least the iPhone 282. Which won't even be OUT until at least the year 2292!!! Also could someone plug me into a brain port? ... I only have 3% brains left so I'm commenting on low brains mode.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 10:34 AM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Wow! I'd never seen that book upright next to people and it's mind-blowing. All these sites are fantastic. Thanks.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:39 AM on July 17, 2017

Great post, and I second what MovableBookLady says about seeing the book next to people (it's barely a MovableBook, hah!). But—and I don't want to seem ungrateful—it's disappointing that the "zoom" only goes one level in, and not far enough that you can actually read labels or appreciate the details. Or am I missing something?
posted by languagehat at 1:16 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Wow, the scale-disorientation is just unreal. I had never seen this. It seems like something out of a dream or a Terry Gilliam movie or something.
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:29 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

The atlas is actually normal size, but the people standing next to it are really really small.
posted by verstegan at 2:24 PM on July 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

omg omg omg this is too damn cool

Yeah I have a thing for maps.

Also, I've done a lot of crude surveying, and getting things right is *hard*. We sort of chuckle at the odd shapes we see, being familiar with today's maps, but the fact they got this stuff as close as they did with the tools they had on a sphere....nothing less than astounding. Beautiful.
posted by Xoebe at 3:08 PM on July 17, 2017

This takes me back to elementary school, where somehow I received information that the largest book in the world was a 6' German dictionary. Very cool news!

I love these maps from the time people went across Mexico to Baja and though the Gulf of Mexico simply must go all the way through. And I bet there are some islands up there. And who doesn't like a little disaster porn ship disaster sprinkled in their cartographs? It must have been such a trip being alive back then. A terrible, violent, stinky trip, but still.
posted by rhizome at 9:50 PM on July 17, 2017

I liked when they covered it with a sheet overnight, as if it was a sleeping bird. I assume that's to prevent dust or light exposure or accidents or whatnot, but it just came off as slightly comical.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:13 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]