Exercises in Cartography - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 20

Fig. 2.6 Unemployment in the Netherlands, left rendered with proportional symbols, and at right
normalized, i.e. expressed as a proportion of the total labour force
Next to map lettering, the most important exercises before the advent of the
computer surely were those of rendering information according to a standardised
legend, in which all the symbols and their measurements, and the various line widths
were prescribed in a master legend. This part was rather repetitive, tiresome and
disappointing, as the teachers always seemed to be able to discern who had drawn
which map, in spite of us all adhering to the prescribed legend and specifications.
As my country is rather small there seemed not to be enough potential carto-
graphic draughtsmen to start a regular cartography course for, so we opted for a
correspondence course, in which the participants had to do exercises and had to send
them in, and would receive them back within a week, annotated with the comments of
the teachers (PBNA cursus, 1973-1976 ). On the exercise sheets the planimetry to be
inked in was rendered in blue, and with special drawing pens and India ink the map
detail had to be applied. In my first presentation to an ICA conference, in Moscow, in
1976, I reported on our experience with setting up this correspondence course.
2.4 Meta-exercises
Next to map drawing and map lettering came map generalization, and here it was
again important that one developed a feeling of hierarchy, a feeling of what was
important and should be retained, even if this activity was closely outlined as well,