 1/ This week some of the OpenCage team were back in London ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ ๐ฌ๐ง for Geomob London @geomob That's reason enough to make this week's #geoweirdness thread the city on the Thames, and it's unique contribution to geography. 15 comments
3/ In 1066 the Normans conquered England, and then decided to take an inventory. The result was the Domesday Book, a comprehensive survey of the country, including around London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book Back in 2012 Anna Powell-Smith presented "Open Domesday" at Geomob London - a project to overlay the survey results on a modern map: https://opendomesday.org 3/ Skipping forward in time ... we jump to one of the most important events in Londonโs history, the Great Fire in 1666. The inferno destroyed two-thirds of Central London and paved the way for a massive rebuild that shaped the city map we know today. Architect Christopher Wren proposed a new layout with wide boulevards, but the city was instead rebuilt following almost the same layout as before. https://blogs.bl.uk/magnificentmaps/2020/09/the-great-fire-of-london.html 5/ In 1854 an outbreak of cholera hit Soho in central London, killing hundreds. Dr. John Snow, a believer in the theory that unseeable, waterborne "germs" caused the disease, plotted the cases on map to find the infected water pump that was responsible for the outbreak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak Today Snow is heralded as a father of the field of epidemiology. A pub named after him is located at the site. 6/ In 1857 London was the site of a new innovation - postal codes. The city was subdivided into 10 districts (EC (East Central), WC (West Central), N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW) Most of these codes are still used today, and the system was later expanded across the country. Here's a street sign showing the postcode area in the no longer existent 7/ In 1884 an international convention met in Washington DC ๐บ๐ธ, and the Greenwich meridian, passing through the Greenwich Observatory, was agreed to be the 0 line of longitude, the so-called "Prime Meridian" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian The line was also used as the basis for timezone definition, hence the term "Greenwich Mean Time" 8/ Not much later Charles Booth meticulously surveyed the demographics of London to create his famous "Life and Labour of the People in London", the first example of a "poverty map" showing the spatial distribution of poverty and inequality in the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_and_Labour_of_the_People_in_London 8/ In 1931 cartography changed forever when technical draughtsman Harry Beck represented the London Underground network as a schematic diagram rather than a geographically correct map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Beck Beck's iconic style has been copied by transport networks - and others - world wide, with many, many variants. Over the years we have had many talks at Geomob London about the Tube network, material enough for a thread of its own in the future. 11/ London is sometimes still referred to as "The Big Smoke", a reference to the terrible pollution of the past, but these days the city is quite green 50% of London is covered in green space, and an incredible 8 million trees are dotted across the capital. In 2019, it was officially declared a National Park City. 14/ Ahh wait if you want to learn more about Geomob London (or other cities) please follow @geomob The next London event will be on July 3rd as part of London Data Week. Here's the summary thread of this week's event: |
Gregory's Server
2/ Let's start in the beginning.
London is an ancient city dating back 2000 years. The Romans founded the first recorded settlements around 47 AD. The Roman conquest lasted until around the 5th century, and various Roman ruins can still be found in the city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium
https://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/where-to-find-londons-secret-roman-sites