The Map that Changed the World is a book by Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester, OBE , is a British-American author and journalist who resides mostly in the United States. Through his career at The Guardian, Winchester covered numerous significant events including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal...

.

It tells the story of geologist William Smith

William Smith (geologist)

William 'Strata' Smith was an English geologist, credited with creating the first nationwide geological map. He is known as the "Father of English Geology" for collating the geological history of England and Wales into a single record, although recognition was very slow in coming...

 and his great achievement, the first geological map of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

. It was the first national-scale geological map, and by far the most accurate of its time. Smith's pivotal insights were that each local sequence of rock strata was a subsequence of a single universal sequence of strata and that these rock strata could be distinguished and traced for great distances by means of embedded fossilized organisms. Winchester paints a highly evocative image of the intellectual context of the time, the development of Smith's ideas and how they contributed to the theory of evolution and more generally to a dawning realisation of the true age of the earth.

Winchester doesn't neglect the social, economic or industrial context either. He describes the importance of coal mining and the transport of coal by means of canals, both of which were a stimulus to the study of geology and the means whereby Smith supported his research. Land owners wished to know if coal might be found on their holdings. Canal planning and construction depended on understanding the rock and soil along its route.

Related topics, such as the founding of the Geological Society of London

Geological Society of London

The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...

, are included. Smith's map was published by John Cary

John Cary

John Cary was an 18th century English cartographer.Cary served his apprenticeship as an engraver in London, before setting up his own business in the Strand in 1783...

, a leading map publisher. Winchester describes the practice of publishing at the time. No less interesting is the description of the system of debtor's prison

Debtor's prison

A debtors' prison is a prison for those who are unable to pay a debt.Prior to the mid 19th century debtors' prisons were a common way to deal with unpaid debt.-Debt bondage in ancient Greece and Rome:...

s, and the account of the sojourn of Smith in the King's Bench Prison

King's Bench Prison

The King's Bench Prison was a prison in Southwark, south London, from medieval times until it closed in 1880. It took its name from the King's Bench court of law in which cases of defamation, bankruptcy and other misdemeanours were heard; as such, the prison was often used as a debtor's prison...

. However, the book suffers in style from the overemphasis on this final point: dedicating the opening passages to its discussion and repeatedly reminding the reader of what is to come while discussing happier years.

Book format details

Simon Winchester was born in 1944, and The Map that Changed the World was published in 2001 by Harper Collins, while Winchester retains the copyright. This, first edition, is illustrated by Soun Vannithone. It includes an extensive index, glossary of geological terms, recommended reading and (lengthy) acknowledgements, as well as many stippled images (of consistent style). The last numbered page is page 329. There are 16 chapters, and single clay paper sheet in the middle containing colour plates of Smith's famous map and a modern geological map for comparison. (Smith's map is less complete, but essentially in agreement with the modern map). An image of Smith's first table of strata, and first (circular) geological map are also included. Just after the contents section, there is a 5-page section giving extensive details on the illustrations (such as the names of the chapter heading fossils). Each chapter begins with an inset image of a fossil, and a large first Capital. The dust-cover of the book can be removed and unfolded to reveal a larger print of the map in question.

The contents

One: Escape on the Northbound Stage

Two: A Land Awakening from Sleep

Three: The Mystery of the Chedworth Bun

Four: The Duke and the Baronet's Widow

Five: A Light in the Underworld

Six: The Slicing of Somerset

Seven: The View from York Minster

Eight: Notes from the Swan

Nine: The Dictator in the Drawing Room

Ten: The Great Map Conceived

Eleven: A Jurassic Interlude

Twelve: The Map That Changed the World

Thirteen: An Ungentlemanly Act

Fourteen: The Sale of the Century

Fifteen: The Wrath of Leviathan

Sixteen: The Lost and Found Man

Seventeen: All Honor to the Doctor.

Escape on a Northbound Stage

A plausible but whimsical description of the day on which William Smith was let out of debtor's prison. It inducts the reader into the interpretation of the time and place to be held consistently throughout the book. Smith is described physically, as heavy-set balding and plain-looking, and emotionally as quiting London in disgust. He is leaving London with nothing other than his wife, nephew, and such possessions as they can carry. It is implied that these circumstances are the result of unjustified discrimination from the scientific elite. The chapter ends with a brief note that 12 years later the injustice was in some measure redressed.

A Land Awakening from Sleep

A description of the social circumstances of the time of the birth of Smith. It begins by emphasising that the date of 4004 bc, for the beginning of the world, computed from the genealogy tables of the bible, was firmly accepted by most; the idea that the world was any older was considered implausible. Explanations based on Noah's flood were acceptable in scientific circles. But, in the year 1769, as Smith was born, James Watt was patenting a steam engine, cloth manufacture was improving, the postal service was viable. New technology and information was rapidly becoming available or even common-place. ``William Smith appeared on the stage at a profoundly interesting moment: He was about to make it more so.