Lloyd Stohler Week 6 BlogPost

I’ve definitely had a lot of experience with cartography. My dad’s collected a ton of antique maps, especially those of the places we’ve lived such as St. Louis or England. Most rooms of my house contain an old map. Looking at a lot of these old maps has shifted the ways I’ve looked at maps in the modern day.

Onto the activity: Here is my attempt at mapping the old Northfield map onto the world map. If you take a close look it’s ever so slightly crooked and wonky but overall it matches up very well. The biggest problem with that map in particular is that the bottom left side of the map was majorly repaved due to the construction of a highway, making it hard to get a grip on that side.

I see georectified maps being incredibly useful to Historians who want a better way to visually compare old locations to new ones. However, there’s definitely a lot of problems in doing so. The Earth is a sphere and thus can’t be accurately projected into a rectangle. Many cartographers of the past made false/inaccurate assumptions of geography because the technology hadn’t gotten to be precise enough. However, despite these faults, it’s not something people can’t work around. Spatial DH works are overall something that can be tricky to do but are very helpful and informative when done right.

If there’s something I’d like to add to the map I adapted to the current globe, it would likely be a better way of presenting the change in roads/structures over time.