REMEMBER MAPS? IF YOU WEREN’T born till the ‘90s, imagine printing out your satnav. The rest of us can recall wrestling with large sheets of paper that refused to return to their original folds – and some of us still keep an atlas in our cars. You can’t explore aimlessly with satnav. (I’m no Luddite: I do use GPS but avoid paying costly ISP data charges by downloading OSM maps – it’s free and you don’t need to be online.)
While last year’s road atlas is simply outdated paper, a 1930s map canby collecting old maps. Once the car was let loose on the roads, mapmakers soon realised they could tailor their products to the new freedom. Some merely added a cover illustration of a car to a cycling map, but many were useful guides, following Michelin’s lead from 1900 in offering details of garages, filling stations and repair depots – all things it was wise for the early motorist to know about.
