Seorabaja-Djokjakarta Rail Diagrams (1937)
This is taken without permission from Envisioning Information, by Edward R. Tufte, tenth printing March 2005 page 24-25.
This map is incredible. Not only the contents displayed rail routes and its time table from Surabaya to Yogyakarta vice versa, according to Tufte’s word:
Drawn in November 1937 (annotated in Dutch, then in Japanese). By smoothly suppressing a dimension first here and then several times there, finessing perspective treatments entirely, and changing the focus, this 24-hour railroad plan abstractly traces out multiple paths thourgh three-space and time, in a four-dimensional tour with dozen other variables carried along.
As you can see in the biggest version, it contains towns which passed by rail—the first train leaving Surabaya about 4:50 in the morning reached the next stop (currently Stasiun Gubeng) about ten minutes later, and so on, distance between town, and also a profile of valleys and mountains crossed by rail.
Wonderful graphic work.
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— Sigit · 29/04/08 02:19 AM · #
At a glance, it looks like a quake graph. Somehow we may need to digitalise our heritage like this one. Old technology or information could be made beneficial to today’s applications, perhaps?