1857 Mitchell's Series of Outline Maps, No. 10 – Physical Map of the World
DESCRIPTION
An impressive survivor from the nineteenth-century American classroom, this large 1857 world map was designed not simply to show geography, but to teach students how to understand and memorize the physical structure of the Earth. This richly colored double-hemisphere map was published in Hartford by O. D. Case & Co. as part of the revised Mitchell's Series of Outline Maps for the Use of Academies & Schools.
The map formed part of a broader educational system developed from S. Augustus Mitchell's popular outline maps and revised by Connecticut educator David N. Camp. Camp prepared an accompanying Geography Embracing the Key to Mitchell's Series of Outline Maps, copyrighted in 1857–58, which supplied the information needed to interpret the otherwise deliberately unlabeled maps. The revised series eventually comprised ten large classroom maps covering political and physical geography, with this No. 10 devoted to the physical geography and climate patterns of the world.
The map includes an array of numbers and letters scattered throughout the map in place of conventional labels. This was intentional as students would consult an accompanying key in which the letters and figures identified features and concepts represented on the wall map. Teachers could then question students with their books closed, transforming the map into an enormous classroom exercise in geographic recognition and memory. Colored regions, numbered areas, lines and distinctive symbols illustrate broad natural, climatic and meteorological patterns, while smaller diagrams surrounding the hemispheres reinforce the concepts presented on the main map. At nearly four feet wide, it was intended to be displayed before an entire classroom rather than studied individually.
CONDITION
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