Turnbull, William D.

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 The Knowledge Bank at The Ohio State University Ohio State Engineer   Title:  The New Base Map of Ohio Creators:  Turnbull, William D. Issue Date:  Apr-1918  Publisher:  Ohio State University, College of Engineering Citation:  Ohio State Engineer, vol. 1, no. 2 (April, 1918), 40-41, 67. URI:  http://hdl.handle.net/1811/33949  Appears in Collections: Ohio State Engineer: Volume 1, no. 2 (April, 1918)           40 The Ohio State EngineerThe New Base Map of OhioBy WILLIAM D. TURNBULL,Assistant Professor of Engineering Drawing, Ohio State UniversityThe necessity for reliable maps based uponactual surveys is apparent to most persons, butmore especially so to engineers since they mustbe sure of the correctness of the data used intheir work. Too many maps are merely patchedup compilations from previous ones the accuracyof which is not to be relied upon. The result isthat mistakes and errors are transmitted fromone map generation to another. The new BaseMap of Ohio, the original drawing of which hasbeen recently completed, is based upon an actualtopographic survey of the entire State andshould, therefore, prove of great value.The purpose in making this new base is to giveto the various departments of the State an ac-curate map of Ohio on which the steam and elec-tric railroads may be printed in colors to form anew railroad map, the highways printed as anoverlay in colors to form a new highway map, anda special overlay to form a water resource mapfor the State Board of Health.It is my purpose to give a description of thisbase map with such details of the drafting workas will be of interest to readers of The Ohio StateDIAGRAMPOLYCONIC PROJECT/ON• Distances XandX'ore notactually equal On a naturalScale JC- 8 28SI metersX = 828-40 meters.Diagram Symmen-ioa/ on ABFig. 1.Engineer. The work is being done by authorityof the Commissioners of Public Printing underthe supervision of Prof. C. E. Sherman of theCivil Engineering Department of the Universityand the writer as Chief Draftsman.The State of Ohio in cooperation with the Fed-eral Government has been engaged for the pastfifteen years in making a topographic survey ofthe State. This survey was completed recently,making Ohio the first large State in the Union tobe thus completely surveyed. We are extremelyfortunate in this particular as the war has stoppedall similar mapping of interior portions of thecountry. In making this topographic survey Ohiowas divided into quadrangles of 15 minutes oflatitude and 15 minutes of longitude each. Thisarea mapped to a scale of one mile to the inchgives a sheet approximately 13 inches by 17inches. These sheets if pasted together wouldmake a complete topographic map of the Statesome twenty feet square. Most readers of TheEngineer are no doubt familiar with these quad-rangle maps which show the topography bymeans of contours, the rivers, creeks, lakes,ponds, railroads, highways, cities, towns, villages,and even the houses.The problem in making the original drawingfor the new base map was to reproduce the essen-tial features of these quadrangles (it takes 212whole and partial quadrangles to cover the en-tire State) to such a scale as would give a smallermap of the State and at the same time give adrawing large enough to insure good and accuratedrafting. After taking into consideration theamount of detail required to be shown and theamount of lettering of different sizes whichwould be necessary to give the names of the dif-ferent cities, towns, and villages their properemphasis, a scale of five miles to one inch wasadopted. This made the size of the drawing 50inches by 66 inches. In addition to the Stateproper, there was room enough to show a portionof each of the bounding states and also insetmaps, to enlarged scale, of the eight largest cities.The map was laid down on the polyconic pro-jection plotted by rectangular coordinates takenfrom Geographic Tables and Formulas compiledby S. S. Gannett of the United States Geologicalburvey, Washington, D. C.It was found that meridian 82° 45' (see dia-gram, Fig. 1) most nearly runs through the cen-ter of the State from north to south, consequentlythis was adopted as the principal meridian andNo*:BY METHOD OFRECTANGULAR-COORD•/NATESClevelandThe Ohio State Engineer 41Fig. 2.the right and left border lines of the map madeparallel to this as an axis. Since the fortieth par-allel of latitude runs from east to west near thecenter of the State, the intersection of these twolines—meridian 82° 45' and parallel 40° 00'—gave a starting point near the center of the sheetof drawing paper. The distances between evendegree parallels, measured along a meridian, didnot vary enough to make any appreciable differ-ence on a map to a scale of five miles in the inch,as the following figures show: From 38° to 39°,distance 13.794 inches; 39° to 40°, distance 13.796inches; 40° to 41°, distance 13.798 inches; 41° to42°, distance 13,801 inches. Since the distancesfor a whole degree varied so slightly in the differ-ent latitudes, the meridional distance for one de-gree was divided into four equal parts, each partrepresenting 15 minutes of latitude. (Fig. 1.)The curving of the parallels of latitudeswas of course very appreciable. At the crossingpoint of meridian 82° 45' and parallel 40° 00' aright angle was constructed. Measuring alongthis right angle line 10.61 inches as abscissa,then at right angles 0.06 of an inch as ortiinate,gave the crossing point of meridian 81° 45' and 40°00' (see Fig. 1). At latitude 41° 00' the abscissawas 10.46 inches as compared with 10.61 inchesabove. Meridians one degree apart converged adistance of 0.62 of an inch in four degrees of lati-tude. After having thus laid out the parallelsand meridians of fifteen minutes of arc, the topo-graphic quadrangles described above were thenpantographed on to the paper drawing to a scaleof five miles to the inch. In Fig. 2 will be seen thetwo large steel pantographs which were used.The original paper drawing (Fig. 2) containedthe following all drawn in black, on Dietzgen's"Double Force" drawing paper: state, county,and township lines; county and township names;streams and stream names; cities, towns, and vil-lages ; city corporation lines; steam and electricrailroads; inter-county and main market high-ways; canals. At the top of the drawing wereshown inset maps, to enlarged scale of Akron,Cleveland, Canton, Toledo, and Youngstown; atthe bottom Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus.These insets show city car lines, steam and elec-tric railroads, principal streets, and public placesof interest.Eight different sizes of lettering were used forthe names of various cities, towns, and villages.The size of letters in each case being dependenton the population of the place in question. Alltowns listed in the latest Official Postal Guidehave their names designated by upright letters,all others by inclined letters. This classificationcomprised all the places in the State from Cleve-land, the largest city, down to hamlets of one hun-dred population.In preparing the map the topographic sheetswere supplemented by the U. S. Army Engineers'latest maps of the Ohio River, State HighwayDepartment's corrected county maps, U. S. LakeSurvey charts of Lake Erie, U. S. GeographicBoard decisions, and U. S. Postal Guide of 1917.Detailed information was furnished by the vari-ous railroad, city, and county engineers.After completing the large drawing it waslithographed to full scale and proofs pulled inlight blue. An edition of fifty of these large scalemaps was printed for special uses of the Statedepartments. Some of these proofs were theninked by hand in black over certain portions only.Take the case of the drainage plate for example:all streams were inked in black on one of thelarge light blue proofs, the drawing then reducedby Dhotography from 50 inches by 66 inches to 32inches by 42 inches. All features not inked inblack by band but remaining in light blue, whichdoes not photograph, are thus eliminated bv thecamera and we have the drainage plate. Theselarge inked proofs are now in the hands of TheNew Columbus Lithograph Company for reduc-tion and final printing.The first finished map will be the new RailroadMap of the State Which will be printed in sevencolors. It will show all the necessary featuresfor a complete combination railroad and rtostalmap. It will be 32 inches bv 42 inches and con-tain: geography in bl^ck; drainage in blue;(Continued on Page 67)The Ohio State Engineer 67NEW BASE MAP OF OHIO of 18,300 copies. A later edition for the State(Continued from Page 41) Highway Department showing inter-county andPennsylvania System in red; Baltimore and Ohio main market roads will consist of 5000 copies.in blue; New York Central Lines in orange; Erie The railroad edition will be ready for distribu-Railroad and interurban electric lines in green; tion about May 1st and may be had by applyingall other minor railroad systems in black. to the Secretary of State. The cost will be ap-The first edition showing railroads will consist proximately fifty cents each.

The New Base Map of Ohio

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The New Base Map of Ohio

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