I picked up a 1950s map in a charity shop today which from the colour of it looked like it had been well used. Despite this it the map had no holes at the joints or folds.
Comparing this to my OS maps which have holes after a few years use, and a recent plastic map I had, which is now unreadable on all the folds.
Why after centuries of producing maps are there no durable alternatives (apart from printing your own and laminating them)? And for curiosities sake, when and why did cloth maps die out?
> And for curiosities sake, when and why did cloth maps die out?
My family has a silk map of the Western Desert, and a silk map of Germany and Northern France which were issued to RAF aircrew during the War and formed part of their evasion and survival kit in the event of being shot down. They belonged to my father who flew as a pilot in both those War theatres. They are coloured and to scale.
The AZ adventure series books using the OS 1:25000 maps are very well designed when it comes to the problem of folds, there's an overlap at the edge of each page, and a gap down the centrefold so no detail is lost due to the binding, the fold over "bookmarks" of the covers make finding the right pages easy as well. Obviously they're best suited to use in the field rather than plotting routes over long distances, or for taking bearings from distant peaks.
The Swedish Lantmäteriets Fjällkartan used to be printed on normal paper, so it was better to laminate the maps before use. Now they print them on some plastic like, waterproof and rip resistant material, a genuine improvement.
