BRITISH LIBRARY DELIVERS..

An early Christmas present was delivered by the British Library this week. It unveiled a million images that it has placed onto a free to use Flickr account.

Anyone can now browse, download, re-image or edit through the collection of illustrations. Each illustration is taken from the massive British Library resources of 17th to 19th century books it has in the archive in London.

I had an hour of browsing and curated my own collection of interesting map images below.
Click an image and it will open the British Library collection in a new tab.

#1: Leonardo Da Vinci's World Map. Da Vinci produced this between 1513 and 1515 (exact date not known). This is an incredibly important map as it is a) the first to name 'America' on it, b) the earliest map showing the West coast of America unconnected to Asia.
Drawn on a strange construction of what are known as Da Vinci-Reuleaux triangles. This is one of the two maps that when placed side by side make up two halves of the globe as Da Vinci saw them - a lot different to our usual representation of the world on a flattened cylinder.
This style of map based on Reuleaux geometry inspired Cahill Butterfly projection maps in the early 20th century.

Image taken from page 84 of 'A larger history of the United States of America to the close of President Jackson's administration ... Illustrated, etc' published 1885

#2: A very nice illustrated Edinburgh map, still showing agriculture in the city centre!
Image taken from page 279 of 'Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh ... Illustrated, etc' published in 1880


#3: The Earth as imagined by the Greeks in the time of Homer (not Simpson, the other one!). Interesting to see how they got the Mediterranean pretty spot on in mapping terms. 
Image taken from page 18 of '[The Countries of the World: being a popular description of the various continents, islands, rivers, seas, and peoples of the globe. [With plates.]]'


#4: A really detailed map of the Balkans - love the simple use of colour for internal political boundaries. Also note the European side of Turkey (Eastern Thrace) is called Rumilla - something I cannot find any links to on the web? Research for another day..
Image taken from page 159 of '[History of the Russian Empire from its foundation by Ruric the Pirate to the accession of the Emperor Alexander II ... With ... engravings.]'


#5: An interesting collection of lakes and inland waters in Eastern Hemisphere (shame they didn't have the plate for the West included in the collection). Shows the truly massive scale of both the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Image taken from page 101 of "[Appleton's European Guide Book illustrated. Containing ... maps, etc.]" published in 1879


I may put up a second blog post in a few days with other types of images - but I love maps so this was an obvious first choice.

There are so many interesting plates/scans in there that you really have to go and take a look yourself if you have any interest whatsoever in illustration or early graphic design.

Next year the British Library are going to launch a crowdsourcing ability or app so that anyone can go and look at the collection, and append notes to the diagrams/illustrations etc

Thank you British Library!

NO ALCOHOL JANUARY..

Last year I raised £160 for Cancer Research UK by not drinking alcohol during January.

This year I'm signing up again to their annual DryathlonTM and have set the target at £200 like last year. I suspect it might be a little harder this year as there's a limit to how many times you can ask your facebook friends to donate. It's not fair to keep digging the same people in the ribs and asking them to cough up money.

So, if you donated last year do please consider whether you can do the same again this year. If you can't it is not a problem. If you don't want to, again it's not a problem.

We all have our favourite charities that we give to and everybody is different in that respect. I do this one for Cancer Research as the scientific programmes that are run in the UK are world class and deserve to be supported. I also give a little bit each month to the Royal National Lifeboat Institute here in the UK too. I am from a coastal town and have had experience of the good work they do (not me airlifted out of the sea, my brother!).

Here's a link direct to my JustGiving donation page - entirely free, the money goes direct to the charity. If you click and donate, thank you.

If you want to do it the easy way, from a UK mobile phone you can simply text like this to 70070. You choose the amount - £2 is just my example!

Finally, if you want to know more - here are some links to the Dryathlon pages, twitter and facebook etc

REALLY BIG BUILDINGS..

Here's something that has slipped my net in the last year.

Europe's tallest building was The Shard in London (310 meters high) during 2012. But, actually it wasn't. At the time the Shard was 'topped off', technical construction term for finalising a building, another tower was already higher than it but hadn't been topped off/completed.

During 2013 the building was finished and ready for occupation. At November 2013 it is Europe's tallest building. In fact, despite many other skyscrapers that are much much taller, it is currently the World's tallest building built of reinforced concrete.

Here's a picture. I really like it's copper cladded look. Bit retro, but I bet it glimmers like crazy in the sunshine.

Sunshine that I guess it doesn't get too much of when you learn where it is.

But, before that. The technical spec:
Height: 339 meters
Floors: 75 + 5 basement floors
Start: 2005
Finalised: 2013
Architects: Mikhail Mikhailovich Posokhin, Frank Williams & Partners LLP

I really like the shape and the look of it.

So, where is this copper clad beauty then?

Moscow, of all places.

It's called Mercury City Tower - strange given the very different colour of Mercury to the building's cladding you might think? There is a reason. The developers are called Mercury Development Company - bit difficult to plan a fluid, liquid-based building made from mercury yet though!

There's a really good set of pictures at this website.

Next door however, there is a new 'tallest building in Europe'. The Russians have been busy putting Moscow back on the skyscraper map. Cue Federation Tower, a real monster construction at 506 meters high.

For now, one last look at Mercury City Tower with the final floors still to be clad (Federation Tower already started to the right).

 

THAT'S THE POINT....???

This amused me today as I read through my first 30 minutes of news etc online -

Then it got me a bit angry really.

If you read the first headline it is all about the benefits to Royal Bank of Scotland in reviving an old family name for a part of their bank, opening new branches on the High St (things going round in circles?!) as their business surveys and advice have been that people like family based names and images for business - good, solid, reliable and not too risky. Just the sort of thing you'd want from somewhere you are taking your hard earned money each week. You get the point.

The second headline is all about market research that suggests people apparently don't like family-based businesses (reader: err.... we've already just covered how people like their reliability haven't we? Polko: yes, stick with me on this...).

Ah, hang on though, it gets better. The article then goes on to suggest that one reason people are not so in favour of family business is because they don't have as much of a voice in business organisations (like the CBI etc) as they do elsewhere. This might be true.

The more powerful argument however, is that family based businesses appear to be boring and slower moving when people want to see 'The Apprentice' style flashy bastards, doing deals, making loads of cash and sitting round in gloss white boardrooms in perfect suits being 'entrepreneurs' (sic - or more like "be sick").

In actual fact, the rest of healthy Europe know the value of family based businesses, low in borrowing, slower moving but growing through time to strong, solid organisations and often producing major products for overseas customers. These firms gain maximum respect in their local areas for being cautious and not throwing away their workforce's pension schemes on some half thought out diversification into property development or online retailing. Google 'Mittelstadt' see what comes up - or better still just click here if you want a quick intro to these types of business.

Sometimes you can come across a similar firm in the UK. Though, it must be said, they are getting thinner on the ground these days. Everybody wants to be a property developer or wannabe Alan Sugar it seems.

Family firms are not boring or conservative. They are dynamic but they take decisions for the long-term, in the best interests of their family members and family members to come. This means they can make much, much longer term decisions and maker braver ones than those looking for a short-term kill.

Long live family businesses. Shame Williams and Glyn's will just be another big corporate bank dressed up in the family's heirlooms.