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Michael Timothy Jones

23 March 1960 - 18 January 2021

Michael T. Jones, an influential computer-science pioneer who, among other achievements, was a creator of Google Earth, died at his home in Sunnyvale, CA on 18 January 2021. He was 60 years old and had been undergoing cancer treatment at the City of Hope.
Michael was born in San Diego, California, and spent his early childhood there and in Vista and Fresno, as the son of Glenn and Dorothy Jones. When Michael was in junior high school, his family moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. He was so advanced in his aptitude and achievement that he began programming computers when he was in fourth grade, worked as a teaching assistant at North Carolina A&T University while in high school, and finished his formal education and launched his own high-tech business after one year at North Carolina State University. In 1980, in North Carolina, he married June Young, who survives him and with whom he recently celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary.
Through his 20s and early 30s Michael Jones founded or worked for a number of computer companies in North Carolina. In his early 30s he moved to California and was an engineer and manager for the innovative company Silicon Graphics. Before age 40, he was the chairman, CEO, and president of Intrinsic Graphics, from which he spun out a digital mapping company called Keyhole, whose maps were extensively used by CNN and other outlets in their reporting during the Iraq war. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, and its technology became what is now known as Google Earth. It was also the basis for the countless Google mapping tools used by more than a billion people worldwide every day.
At Google, Michael served first as Chief Technology Officer for Google's range of mapping products, and then as Chief Technology Advocate for the company as a whole. In that role he became well-known around the world for his leadership and advocacy in the many areas of his passionate expertise. These spanned a very broad range: from high-definition photography and boat design; to ocean mapping and conservation; to architecture, the social implications of technology, and a deep knowledge of history.
In June 2020, Michael Jones was awarded the Patron's Medal, the highest honor of the Royal Geographical Society, in London. "Everyone is inventive," he said, in an interview on receiving the award. "You need only ignore limits and ask yourself 'how should it be?' "
"Inventors are just laborers toiling to make things be as we feel they should," he said. "For me, a key trait is passion for ideas, loving them as parents love children and grandchildren: embracing them, sacrificing for them, excusing the worst and believing the best of them, being patient and supportive with an enduring love as they mature. Like children, they take time to develop into the brightness of their promise. I have been this way all my life."
Michael's curiosity, intellect, and achievement were exceeded only by his generosity and capacity to love. His work has influenced billions of people who might never know his name but are touched every day by his ideas. He is mourned by all fortunate enough to have known him.

From MercuryNews.com. Retrieved on 29 January 2021.

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The Newberry Library’s Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography is pleased to announce Mapping Nature Across the Americas, a four-week NEH seminar for schoolteachers. Based at the library, due to the ongoing pandemic, the seminar will be held entirely online from 12 July to 6 August 2021.
The seminar directors, Dr. James Akerman (a geographer and the Newberry’s Curator of Maps) and Dr. Kathleen Brosnan (an environmental historian and the Travis Chair of Modern American History, University of Oklahoma) will lead 16 schoolteachers on a course of reading, discussion, and research.
Read more.

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The blog of our Member Stanislas De Peuter (CartaHistorica) focuses on the three most important Dutch maps of the Strait of Magellan and Cape Horn. They provide ample information on several the Dutch passages.
Read more.

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Eduard Imhof was a remarkable Swiss cartographer renowned for his beautiful impressionistic topographic mapping style. He used hues to create a sense of sun-bathed warmth and cool shadow and feathered a sense of atmospheric perspective into his hillshades that rendered directly-illuminated peaks as crisp golden angles and blanketed valleys in the blues and greens of scattered incidental light.
An article by John Nelson.
Link: href="https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/steal-this-imhof-like-topography-style-please/.

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In October 2021 the Royal Library of Belgium and the Brussels Map Circle will host the 38th IMCoS Symposium.
The 38th IMCoS Symposium will highlight the early Belgian contributions to the development of cartography worldwide, such as the introduction of triangulation techniques (Frisius, van Deventer), first world atlases (Ortelius, Mercator) and the first navigation map in Mercator projection.
This Symposium is planned as a three-day event, commencing with an opening reception on the evening of 11 October 2021 at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), comprising speaker presentations at the KBR and visits to collections/institutions holding remarkable map collections: the State Archives of Belgium, the Art & History Museum and the Royal Army Museum. An official dinner will close the conference on 14 October 2021.
Further details on the dedicated website.

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When more than a year ago Caroline De Candt asked me if I might be interested in taking over the Presidency from her in 2021, my initial reaction was a negative one. Not that I didn’t want to, on the contrary I was honoured by her initiative, but rather I thought (and still think) that my multiple professional occupations would prevent me of doing the job as it should be done. For the past years I have been scientific advisor to the Brussels Map Circle and in so doing was able to have a look behind the scenes of the Circle’s organisation. And although we are a fairly small circle, with a defined yearly programme, although the President can count on a trustworthy and dynamic Executive Committee, the Presidency requires great availability of its incumbent. And I wasn’t sure – actually, I am still not very sure – if I could guarantee such availability. In addition I would have loved to see Caroline continuing the Presidency. But she had made up her mind and couldn’t be persuaded to stay on. Furthermore, with the health crisis forcing her to cancel the Circle’s trip to Venice, which should have been the final act of her then almost ten-year Presidency, she decided to step down early, in October 2020. So, as the saying goes, what must be, must be, and I agreed to be a candidate for the Presidency of the Circle on condition that I could be, following Eric Leenders’ example (MiH No 31, May 2008), a transitional President in the hope that within a reasonable lapse of time a younger, and more available, candidate will put him/herself forward. Under these conditions I was elected President in October 2020.

In the nine years of her Presidency (19 March 2011 - 07 October 2020), Caroline profoundly changed the organisation of the Circle. On 24 March 2012 its original name, BIMCC – Brussels International Map Collectors’ Circle, changed into the more straightforward Brussels Map Circle (MiH No 43, May 2012). She also put some order into the Circle’s statutes. From January 2012 onwards the traditional Newsletter became Maps in History; and thanks to her brother Paul it now boasts a new layout and is published in colour (MiH No 42, January 2012). She arranged for General Assemblies and Map Afternoons (MAPAF) to be held at the Royal Library of Belgium, and the Meetings of the Executive Committee at the premises of Arenberg Auctions (MiH No 60, January 2018). But Caroline not only took initiatives regarding the formal aspects of our organisation, she also put her stamp on its content. For instance, every second year she embedded the Circle’s conference into the framework of Europalia, the prestigious international cultural festival held in Belgium every two years which each time takes a different country/region as a focus. For many years she had an excellent partner in the geography department of Ghent University, more particularly its head, Prof. De Maeyer, with whom she organised the lecture series in Ghent on Reading old maps (October 2011 - May 2012; MiH No 41, September 2011). At the Mercator conference in Sint-Niklaas, another initiative of the Geography department, several of our Members presented their personal research (25 - 28 April 2012; MiH No 43 and 44) and in 2015 the Circle sponsored the organisation of the ICHC conference in Antwerp (12 - 17 July 2015; MiH No 53, September 2015). In the same city, she organised a well-attended reception at the Plantin-Moretus Museum to celebrate the Circle’s twentieth anniversary (MiH No 61, January 2019). Another joint venture, this time with the Royal Library and the Davidsfonds editing house, formed the framework within which the book Vlaanderen in 100 kaarten [Flanders in 100 maps], under the direction of Eric Leenders and myself, could be written. And we went to Rome … another joint venture, this time with the Associazione Culturale Roberto Almagià (MiH No 56, September 2016). Under her Presidency the monthly digital WhatsMap? was launched, bringing our Members the latest news on what is going on in the world of the history of cartography. Her last initiative were the occasional talks on aspects of the history of cartography she wanted to organise, of which, unfortunately, due to the health crisis, only one could actually take place, at the Royal Library of Belgium on 6 February 2020. Perhaps I have forgotten one or two more initiatives she took, but even as it stands now, the list of achievements is impressive and sets the bar very high for her successor(s), to say the least.

I realise this is not the easiest period to take over, nor is it the time to be very ambitious. Our Circle’s aim is above all to meet, to come together, to exchange ideas, look at maps, listen to scholars, colleagues and friends talking about their research into an aspect of the history of cartography, a specific collection or a particular map. Today it has become very difficult to plan such meetings or get-togethers. We cannot arrange map evenings, conferences, or trips. Many societies, museums and other cultural organisations try to replace the physical with the virtual; podcasts and webinars are proposed online. It is obvious to all of you we cannot offer that. But it doesn’t mean the Circle’s activities are necessarily on hold. On the contrary, we have our website, which is updated on a regular basis, as is our WhatsMap? Our magazine Maps in History will bring you the latest news of our reading, our ideas, our research and that of others. And … we are working on our future. In October 2021 we will host the 38th IMCoS Conference on Belgium’s contribution to cartography. Do have a look at the apposite webpage. Probably it will be the first time we can meet again physically. We are determined to make it a party! Until then, keep safe!

Wouter,
President

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At the October 2020 auction organised by Reiss & Sohn in Königstein im Taunus, Germany, the Royal Library of Belgium acquired a rare state of an Italian copy of Mercator’s map of the county of Flanders. The cartouche in the lower right corner bears the Latin title Exactissima Flandriae descriptio, a short description of the county by Nicolaas Stopius followed by the impressum Venetiis MDLVIII (1558). It is attributed to the Venetian bookseller and publisher Giovanni Francesco Camocio on the basis of a more common later state of the map that does mention Camocio’s name (1559). A coloured copy of the map is kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and can be viewed in Gallica.

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Members of the Brussels Map Circle will remember the scoop presented by Jacques Mille in Maps in History No 59 (September 2017): A recently discovered portolan chart. Maybe one of the oldest extant? The Avignon chart.
See also the article of Jacques Mille and Paul Fermon on our website
Jacques has continued to research the subject and he had planned to present an update at our MAPAF in March this year; unfortunately, the event had to be cancelled … Instead, he is now going to publish a book on this portolan.
This book, privately published, will feature 350 pages and 160 illustrations. Limited edition: 400 copies, each copy numbered and signed by the author.
La carte d’Avignon describes the author’s research on nautical medieval charts and portolans, particularly of the French Mediterranean coasts, from Italy to Spain (1st part), and studies (2nd and 3rd parts) an exceptional nautical chart recently discovered in the Archives of Vaucluse, Avignon.
The book aims to prove that this chart, now referred to as La carte d’Avignon, is one of the oldest known to us from that period (along with Pisan and Cortona examples), datable to ca 1300 - 1310, and that it could be the first to map the North Sea as far as Scotland and Gotland island in the Baltic Sea.
The author demonstrates that the chart’s anonymous maker was a professional and that his work was both innovative and conducted in secret, more than a quarter of a century before the nautical charts of Vesconte (1311 - 13), Carignano and Dulcert (1330), considered until now as the first to map these regions.
A subscription opens now, allowing you to receive the book (in May 2021) at a subscription price of EUR 40.00 (including shipping costs upon publication), instead of the retail price of EUR 60.00.
If you are interested in this subscription, please express your interest by email to Jacques Mille, before 31 December 2020; you will be sent a copy of the subscription form, with a more detailed description of the forthcoming volume.
Or, better, transfer directly EUR 40.00 to Jacques Mille’s account IBAN FR 94 30002 02815 0000000167M 30, BIC CRLYFRPP and inform Jacques Mille. This will give rise to an acknowledgement of receipt with the sending of a few sample pages of the book.

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