Almost 20 years ago, practically right out of high school and through college, I started working in a surveyors' office- one that had tens of thousands of old plats and maps, some of which dated back to the turn of the century... I just love looking at old time surveyors' drawings from that time period- the lettering, the care and time they took drawing them just amazes me.
Claus Moser's Kartentisch blog discusses a site that has some gorgeous maps drawn by an Austrian surveyor named Johann Orth. I was reading Orth's story on the site- fascinating stuff. He was born 1929, pressed into service in the military for the tail end of WWII at the age of 16, ended up in a russian POW camp, and after the war worked as a surveyor, photogrammetrist, and cartographer for the Austrian government for 47 years, until he retired in 1981.
Since then he's been hand-drawing maps in that old style of what Vienna and various cities and places in Austria would have looked like at various points in time, going back two hundred years in time, based on his research and work with an Austrian museum- his maps are absolutely gorgeous.
Planauswahl (Index of plans)
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Austria, blogs, cartography, design, geo, Geography, history, map, mapping, maps, photogrammetry, surveying , symbolization, Vienna
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Very intersting. Old maps are fascinating considering the face of things is changing so quickly nowadays.
Found you on Technorati, I'm not far, Lehigh Valley~stopped in to say "hey"!