Back by popular demand, this entry is a showcase for more of the Antipodes mapping that can be found in the Bartholomew Archive Printing Record.

One of the publications for which Bartholomew regularly provided the cartography was Gordon & Gotch's "Australian Handbook". Myriad maps and plans were produced, of which these are a selection.

This mineral map perhaps belies the underlying interest of "Australian Handbook" owners, namely a hope for wealth in what was still a partly unexplored country. In their arrogance, maps such as the exploration map below neglect to remember that other people had trod the land long before the settlers had. As can be seen, the map was produced for the 1892 edition with everything in white being "unexplored".

Gordon & Gotch were not the only company that Bartholomew supplied maps to. In fact they were occasionally called upon to produce maps with a certain degree of niche appeal. One such map is this, printed on 4 April 1889 with a second edition in 1900.

Stations such as these eclipsed anything which could be found in Britain, drover's runs could cover hundreds of miles. The famous Canning Stock Route was 1113 miles long. To put that into context, this is equivalent to driving hundreds, or even thousands of cattle from Land's End to John o' Groats, then back again (and that's only the outward journey) in temperatures rarely encountered here and in a landscape famous for its scarcity of water.

Nevertheless, and in spite of these very real difficulties, the potential of what could be achieved by those willing to risk an investment in Australia fell on eager ears. No doubt hyperbole, exaggeration and a little cynical exploitation fanned the flames of enthusiasm but many of the pioneering companies endure to this day, implying that there was a least some foundation of reality in the myth.

One such company is the deceptively named New Zealand and Australia Land Company, Ltd. This concern was in fact formed by an 1877 Act of the British Parliament, and for much of its life was run from its main offices in Scotland. The remit was simple, to acquire land. This map from 1892 shows the extent of their dealings up to that point.

It may not look impressive, but property number one alone, Wellshot, is 2,500 square miles in size, that's almost four times bigger than London!

But it wasn't necessarily just big business which enjoyed Bartholomew's skill; it was also put to more civic duty as this map of South Australia, showing public works demonstrates.

When you put it all together, and include the previous entry Bartholomew Down Under, the inescapable impression emerges that Bartholomew had a sort of fondness for Australia. Be it emotional or purely commercial, the amount of material printed pertaining to Australia is proportionally larger than for almost any other non-British Isles location.

Today's entry is dedicated to all Swedish railway enthusiasts and all enthusiasts of Swedish railways. Here is the Railway Map of Sweden.

Printed on the 8 August 1898, a somewhat surprising 3,100 copies were made. The order was placed by fellow Edinburgh publishers Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. at this time located at Causewayside, incidentally the area where Bartholomew themselves moved in 1911.

It is not clear why Ballantyne required the map, or indeed where it ended up. What is clear however is that this is a particularly niche item surely appealing to a very limited market. Therefore the rapidity between the order and the printing is somewhat astonishing - a mere 12 days. That might not sound a lot but consider how many people would have had access to such data at the time, then add to that the need to engrave it onto a copper plate, undergo the entire printing process (in this case requiring four separate printings for each of the four colours) and then dispatching it. But this is revelatory of one of Bartholomew's greatest strengths, they cheated.

Scandinavia was a very popular tourist destination at this time, a fact borne out by the amount of material Bartholomew printed relating to tours and trips there. There are 7 items printed during 1888-97 for tours with the Leith, Hull and Hamburg Steam Packet Company, surely as fun and glamorous as they sound, 10 items printed from 1893-96 for tours with the North of Scotland & Orkney & Shetland Steam Navigation Company and 23 other maps all relating to Scandinavian holidays. In other words, Bartholomew already had an armoury of maps onto which they were easily able to superimpose the railway information required. Cheating maybe, canny yes.

But, as ever, there is more to this map than at first meets the eye and in this case it comes in the form of some interesting details regarding the Swedish railway system.

Who knew that Sweden's railway infrastructure was the best in Europe at this time? It remains the world's 20th most extensive network and includes one of the oldest electrified stretches still in use in Europe, the Roslagsbanan. However, the average speed of 24mph is mockingly laughable by today's standards, a much more exciting 155mph.

I conjecture that the map was possibly conceived of as a model for improvements in the British system, either an aspirational ideal or a disparaging equivalent. But on this I cannot be sure, personally, I just like its improbability.

I have a tendency to shudder at the mere thought of advertising. The idea of television programmes which tantalisingly countdown the top 100 adverts fill me with dread, on many levels. Can something so inherently awful ever be beautiful? Of course, it turns out that the answer is yes.

Until now this blog has focused exclusively on items from the Bartholomew Archive Printing Record. Yet the Printing Record is merely one component of this impressive and extensive Archive. Departing from the norm, this entry is dedicated to some of the beautiful, and dare I say it charming, advertising from the Bartholomew Archive Business Record.

This is perhaps the quintessential Bartholomew advert. It dates from the late 1920's into the 1930's. It manages to capture something of the excitement and freedom that newly available automobiles offered. Who knows what lay over yonder hill, who can tell the wondrousness just encountered in the valley behind? Of course, the answer is anyone with a Bartholomew map! At this time there is a real explosion in the number of maps Bartholomew were explicitly aiming at this market. It is an extension of the contacts which they had long since forged with groups such as the Cyclist's Touring Club or the Caledonian Railway, producing maps of cycling or railway routes and lines. Now however, the clients included the A.A., the R.A.C. and the Royal Scottish Automobile Club.

Images such as these typify this period in time. Any episode of Poirot or Miss Marple worth their salt would have images such as these discreetly in the background, conjuring up a sense of a bygone era. They are somehow familiar, comforting and satisfyingly traditional - qualities Bartholomew would have been eager to convey. Yet they are also, surprisingly, in the minority of the advertising material in the Archive which in fact shows a tendency towards the unusual, the modern and the vaguely dangerous.

Photography is perhaps not the first medium which springs to mind when imagining 1930's advertising, yet here's Bartholomew experimenting in just this way.

And this is just what they are, experiments. No evidence (so far) exists which proves that Bartholomew pursued these images, of which there are a total of five. There is a narrative here, a mystery. Who are they? Where are they? What are they doing? They intrigue and beguile, surely everything an advert at its best ought to do? They mark a stark departure from the bucolic connotations of the watercolours. Perhaps too stark of a departure for an essentially conservative, gentile and traditional firm.

But contradicting that are a set of images which Bartholomew did print, albeit in a very small quantity. A set of four photographs, similar in style to the one above were printed in 1935. A mere 150 copies were printed demonstrating a tentative reticence, a testing of the water perhaps. This does not appear to be a style that they pursued with much vigour or conviction.

As well as printed copies of advertising, the Business Record also contains proofs and drafts, such as above. The route from original sketch to finished product is sometimes possible to reconstruct. Just who the artists were remains a total mystery. Signatures appear on some, others are anonymous. The name most often encountered is J. G. Rennie, but just who this is, I do not know. Records from the Business Archive detailing advertising matters are rare, very rare, indicating two possibilities. Firstly, that they haven't survived, secondly, that there was a certain embarrassment, a cloak-and-dagger nature to these dirty dealings. My money's on the second. Bartholomew did not even have a dedicated marketing team until the 1970's.

For all of their charm, inherent beauty, social relevance, the thing that I love most of all is the women. Women in this make believe Bartholomew world are dominating the skill of map reading. This is a small but interesting detail. Historically, companies including the venerable Ordnance Survey, tended to show women as peripheral by standers in a world where men did the map thing. So, if only for this fact alone, here's a cheer for Bartholomew!

What better way to start 2010 than by giving myself the day off? Today's entry has been written by my colleague Chris Fleet and looks at an interesting and unusual map of Dundee which was recently discovered in the Bartholomew Archive Printing Record.

This spectacular panoramic photograph and map of Dundee harbour caught our attention during recent conservation. Merely one of the thousands of publications by Bartholomew, this particular item encapsulates many aspects of 1930s Dundee. The worldwide recession in the interwar years hit Dundee hard, with a major slump in textiles and related industries, and over a third of the labour force unemployed.

Amongst the various attempts to encourage new work and employment was a publication by the City of Dundee Development Corporation, accompanied by its inviting Do it At Dundee gold plaque.

This was a carefully written propaganda exercise, promoting executives and industrialists to move to the city, with pictures of its parks, golf courses, and state of the art port facilities. The striking panoramic view from Dundee Law was in fact done by Bartholomew blog veterans Valentines (see Now you don't see them, now you do) the famous Dundee photographic and postcard company, with the accompanying map by John Bartholomew & Son Ltd.

Bartholomew had been producing plans for Dundee Harbour Trust for at least two decades, and this map was reduced from a larger scale plan of the harbour they published in the same year at 1:2,500. Although the Ordnance Survey revision of 1921 would have provided basic cartography, there is much updated and additional information: company names and street names, depths of water on the wharves, loading capacities of cranes, harbour lights, and even underground sewers. 7,208 copies were printed on 10 December 1931, with water coloured blue, roads in sienna, and buildings in grey.

On the back is an attractive colour-coded plan of Dundee proposing new developments - regenerating the former industrial sites, planning new roads and outlying industrial estates, along with a large expansion of residential areas outwards from the city centre.

In 1911, over 60% of Dundee households lived in 1 or 2 roomed houses, and slum clearance and better housing was a key priority. From 1919 to 1939, over 8,100 local authority houses were built, many in new suburban districts such as Logie, Beechwood, and Craigiebank or Craigie Garden Suburb. This map is in many ways a blueprint for post-war Dundee, encouraging the residential and industrial expansion north of the Kingsway ring road, and even anticipating the new Proposed Municipal Airport (albeit some three decades before its eventual opening in 1962).

Both plans bore the stamp of James Hannay Thomson, the Dundee Harbour Trust General Manager and Engineer, who successfully encouraged a transition away from Dundee's failing textile industries towards new manufacturing at this time. He also was able to recognise the future importance of transportation of raw materials by roads, and not just by sea - a difficult issue, given the historical investment in the harbour and its immense value as a source of income and employment. Although they took time to locate in Dundee, multinational companies such as Dayco, Holochrome, National Cash Register, Timex, and Michelin provided much needed post-War employment, and the 1960s maps of Dundee show a surprisingly similar form to this map of 1931.

The importance of this map rests particularly on its promotional role, in presenting Dundee as an attractive, clear and organised geographical space for potential development, in conjunction with a well-argued supporting text. It serves as a useful reminder that for the history of towns from Victorian times into the post-War period in Scotland, some of the most useful and regularly updated maps were drawn and published, not by Ordnance Survey, but by Bartholomew.

As 2009 draws to its inevitable conclusion it seems appropriate to mark the occasion by saving, in my opinion, the best 'till last. To stumble across something of interest in the Bartholomew Archive Printing Record is, in all honesty, almost inevitable. Items printed by Bartholomew can have a genuine cartographic value, they can have great social value, and they can transpire to have interesting stories behind them but the item which has inspired this entry is rare because it manages to satisfy all of these. This is Sir Harry H. Johnston's map of Black, White & Yellow British Africa

As someone who sees a fair number of Printing Record items this one initially stood out for its striking and bold aesthetic. In the scheme of things it is relatively small, measuring only 23cm by 16cm (in the context of an Archive with items well over a square metre in size) but its impact belies this. There is an almost enigmatic quality to this map as it manages to look incredibly simple and yet at the same time conveys a wealth of information. The bold colour scheme, so unlike other items which Bartholomew were printing at this time, coupled with the social and commercial undertones demanded further examination.

Pivotal to the story of this map is the figure of Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston (1858-1927), or Harry as he preferred.

By the time this map was printed, in October 1890, Johnston was a renowned, highly flamboyant and talented British consular official in Africa. In his youth he had dreamed of becoming an artist and worked simultaneously at the Zoological Gardens in London and as a painter of anatomical curiosities at the Royal College of Surgeons. He eventually secured a place at the Royal Academy but by then he was plagued by the realisation that, as an artist, he would never be anything more than competent. This was to be the major turning point in his life. Johnston instead turned to travel and in the process showed an innate aptitude for language which proved so useful in his later Foreign Office career.

The map itself was presented to members of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce and graphically proposed an imaginary and enlarged British Empire in Africa. It accompanied a speech given by Johnston entitled 'The development of tropical Africa under British auspices'. The speech touched upon such disparate themes as domesticating elephant, the right type of person for life in Africa, namely no gluttons or drinkers, the fundamental wealth of African products and the profit to be obtained by working with the native populations. Ultimately however his purpose was singular, to make a clear case for the benefits of colonial expansion in Africa through increased funding from the British Parliament, as well as through chartered companies. His main ally in Liverpool was the colonial magnate Sir Alfred Jones (1845-1909) at this time head of shipping firm Elder Dempster & Co. By 1890, Jones had built up a predominant control over the entire merchant shipping trade from Africa to Liverpool, and had considerable related colonial and commercial interests in West Africa.

Socially, this came at a time when major international agreements on African partition were being negotiated. Johnston had huge ambitions for an expanded British Empire and in fact it was Johnston who coined the term 'From Cape to Cairo'. By this time he had established his reputation and wielded the power of several influential allies including the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury as well as substantial financial support, to the tune of £10,000 per annum, from Cecil Rhodes. Johnston vigorously supported the signing of an Anglo-German Agreement in July 1890, and the signing of an Anglo-Portuguese Agreement in June 1891. This effectively brought the Lakes Region of Africa under the control of Rhodes' British South Africa Company. From February 1891, Johnston was appointed consul-general for these territories north of the Zambesi (including Nyasaland, now part of Zambia). He recruited Sikhs from the Punjab as a fighting force, necessary given the armed resistance to his attempts to assert British sovereign rights over the area.

It is easy to think of these times and those involved with scornful disdain, and there is unquestionably justification there. But, when seen in context, although the motivations may now seem abhorrent, to people like Johnston there was utter conviction in the right and good of their cause. His Black, White & Yellow theme is a highly visual encapsulation of that. For Johnston it was a reflection of the potential strength which could come from Black Africans, Yellow Arabs, and White Europeans working together. So ardently did he believe this that he wore a straw hat with ribbons of these colours, his staff were asked to wear yellow waistcoats with their black and white suits, and he wrote letters on special writing paper edged with these colours. He designed flags, coats of arms, and even postage stamps for his proposed British Protectorate with these colours, and his soldiers wore a specially designed black, white and yellow uniform.

As history has revealed however these plans were never to come to fruition. A series of misfortunes at a time of incredible political complexity, of which it is not possible to do any justice to here, effectively quashed Johnston's hopes. He himself fell out with Rhodes, lost the goodwill and respect of his Foreign Office colleagues and finally lost his health after suffering a succession of episodes of Blackwater Fever (an infinitely terrifying illness which is no exaggeration to say was usually fatal). He would never see his ambitions realised and returned to Britain more or less a pariah who stood for the colonial aspirations that some were already beginning to see as an embarrassment. However, Johnston did make a genuine contribution to linguistics via his seminal Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages (1919) and enjoyed moderate success as an author and lecturer, touring the United States, Germany and ultimately the front line of First World War France.

Johnston has revealed himself to be an intensely likable, interesting and engaging man. His life had of course far more depth than it is possible to convey here and if you are interested I recommend his autobiography, The Story of My Life (1922). He writes exceedingly engagingly but perhaps most of all it is fascinating to hear a personal account of life at the height of the age of Empire.

Lastly, I would just like to thank Chris Fleet on whose research much of this entry relies.

Bartholomew maps probed every nook and cranny of the globe, in some cases mapping land almost as fast as it was being discovered. Be it a series of maps for an atlas or a special one off commission by an individual, organisation or society there is almost no part of the world which did not fall under their scrutiny.

But the one major exception to this, and an entirely understandable one when seen through commercial eyes, are maps of the world as it was in the past. The odd one or two do crop up from time to time in the Printing Record but by no means can it be asserted that this was a roaring trade for Bartholomew. With this in mind, two examples which were recently discovered make for an interesting exception.

This relatively attractive map may in some respects seem entirely unexceptional were it not for the give away clue in its title, for this is in fact a map of Roman Britain.

Whilst it is arguable that much of the natural environment has not substantially changed, to see a human landscape so different from our own superimposed upon one that is familiar is quite interesting. In some regards it's a bit like redecorating a room, but on a massive scale.

Much of what appears on this map is surprisingly familiar, from the Fosse Way to Hadrian's Wall.

Other parts are strikingly different, in particular Scotland, a place which was never fully under the sphere of Roman influence and consequently appears as almost uninhabited.

2030 copies of this map were printed by Bartholomew on the 13 December 1899 for the publisher John Murray. Murray was a long standing client for Bartholomew offering a steady if relatively small flow of work to the firm.

Although produced for a different purpose the second map is also relative to the Roman Empire and again, was printed for Murray.

This map, contrasting the Roman Forum with modern Rome was printed on the 27 December 1898. It was produced for the Murray Handbook of Rome, one of the series of the enduringly popular Murray Handbooks for which Bartholomew often supplied maps.

Being by no means an easy thing to recreate or convey the map does a decent job of simplifying the Forum allowing the user to put it into context.

The potentially limited market and possible difficulties Bartholomew might have faced in compiling information of this kind are perhaps amongst the reasons why maps such as this formed such an insignificant part of their output, at this time at least. But regardless, there is something appealing about them. If part of the interest of a map lies in seeing our world presented in assorted scales, in assorted levels of detail then these maps add the further dimension of time. And of course it is only a matter of time before maps of Britain in 2009 become the cultural curiosities of the future.

It is arguable that we never have handwriting as good as we had at 11. Years of patient practise, unceasing drilling and line after line after line ensured a cursive perfection that we gleefully unshackle ourselves from at the first available opportunity. It was perhaps ever so. However, examples of copy book pages found in the Bartholomew Archive Printing Record are a timely reminder of the beauty and worth of a clear and immaculate hand.

In total there are 35 double sided sheets of copy book pages in the Printing Record. It represents a not insubstantial glimpse into late Victorian education, standards and in some respects morality too. Some of the copy book material is dubious to a modern eye, some of it is extraordinary in its complexity and some of it is frankly odd. Not wanting to be a naysayer of the modern educational system lists of words such as this below astonish me with their exuberant optimism of a child's expected vocabulary.

These pages were ultimately destined for copy books published by Gall and Inglis. Unlike other material printed by Bartholomew the utilitarian nature of these pages stands out as unique in the Printing Record. Another consequence is that relatively little of this type of material remains today. These sheets were designed to be used and disposed of and for this reason they represent something quite rare.

Some of the phrases, quotations from poetry and factual information offered up as handwriting exemplars are surprisingly gloomy for a youthful audience.

Whilst others resemble something you might hear emanating from a studenty bar late at night.

In a week where we are told even our own Prime Minister could do with a bit of practise maybe it's time we all took up our pens and attempted to live up to the expectations of a Victorian childhood.

Interesting though today's subject might be in this instance interesting is also a euphemism for "help, I haven't got a clue!". Bartholomew were unquestionably pioneers in their field, experimenting with colour, technique and design but what they achieved in these images is well beyond my expertise.

This is a sheet of eight, incredibly beautiful views, based on photographs taken by leading Scottish photographers. 2020 sheets were printed by Bartholomew on the 6th June 1882 although unhelpfully there is little else to go on in the Archive. According to the sheet they were produced for blog favourites MacNiven & Cameron, who cropped up in May with their outrageous stationery (When a Ballpoint just won't do). Just what MacNiven & Cameron planned to do with them is unclear but postcards are a distinct possibility.

The works of three photographers are represented. Arguably the most famous is George Washington Wilson renowned as a pioneer of photography in Scotland and famous for the poignant image of a grief stricken Queen Victoria upon her horse accompanied by John Brown. James Valentine also appears, with images taken from photographs of the Dundee area for which he was so famous. Again quite poignantly, Valentine is perhaps best remembered for the images taken of the Tay Bridge following its collapse in 1879. This was a monumental failure of engineering a result of which 75 people lost their lives, faith in progress was shaken, a landscape was dramatically altered and dubious poetry was inspired. These photographs would ghoulishly go on to be made into postcards but had been originally taken with the more honourable intention of being used as evidence in the official court inquiry. The third photographer is Peter MacFarlane who, as you can see if you've been following the links, has the distinction of being the only one without a Wikipedia page! His work appears to be less well known even though, in his own eyes, he was an official Royal photographer.

Neither Wilson nor Valentine suffered this fate with substantial archives in existence comprised of their phenomenal output. I cannot recommend highly enough a tour of Wilson's work via the pages of the University of Aberdeen Photographic Archive and of Valentine's via the University of St. Andrews Photographic Archive. In fact it was by doing just this that I came to be intrigued by the technique involved.

The above image captures the life of the people of Corpach, huddled under the looming protection of Ben Nevis. It was taken by Wilson, though the exact date is unknown, and is very practically called Ben Nevis from Corpach. A comparison with the original reveals one telling difference though, in the original the people aren't actually there. Exactly the same is true of a Valentine image called Inverlochy Castle and Ben Nevis. Whilst ostensibly the same photograph there are suddenly a couple of figures frolicking on the pebble beach in the foreground.

It is an interesting technique in that it produces an astonishingly beautiful effect. It is akin to a soft focus filtering already soft light. Yet how was it achieved and why the inclusion of the figures? Was it to add interest, did the lack thereof fail to satisfy MacNiven & Cameron's artistic sensibilities, was it to avoid copyright infringements by claiming them as something new? Whatever the reason though the images remain undoubtedly lovely.

You would seldom have found a Bartholomew map in the Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in the late nineteenth century. Understandably, Bartholomew were focused on producing maps for the publication of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, a Society which John George Bartholomew had been a founder member of. However, there were times when a map required a certain technical touch and as today's map demonstrates this was when Bartholomew were turned to.

Although deceptively simple in appearance this map is actually full of fine and intricate detail and relies upon the masterful use of colour in order to convey that very sense of simplicity.

The map itself is a representation of the dream of Dutch engineers and business entrepreneurs to massively increase the scale of their small nation through reclaiming land from the sea. That this was done is no secret but just how it was done and the people involved is perhaps something given less thought.

The map accompanies a very brief article in the March 1893 edition of the Geographical Journal which was written by Pieter Hendrik Schoute. Schoute was Professor of Mathematics at Groningen but had done his first degree in civil engineering. With his interest in Euclidean geometry and regular polytopes quite how he came to author this article is unclear, however, it reveals something of the history of the project and the processes undertaken which culminated in the ability to produce the map.

A committee was established in 1886 tasked with considering the possibilities of extending the land mass. A massive eight volume tome resulted with each volume concentrating on a specific problem and postulating the potential solution. The focus of each ranged from commercial and strategic issues to engineering and geology. To a modern eye the one area which appears to be conspicuously lacking is the environmental impact.

The project sought to reclaim 500,000 acres of fertile land and a further 30,000 for non-agricultural purposes from the Zeiderzee. This would be achieved through the construction of numerous dykes including the main seclusion dyke designed to cut the Zeiderzee off from open water and causing it to become a great lake. Sluices in this dyke would compensate for the waterways which drained into the lake thereby maintaining a constant water level and eventually polders, or low lying tracts of land, could be established. The lake would gradually change from salt to freshwater and a whole new ecosystem would be created. Shipping links would be maintained, of exceptional importance to a port such as Amsterdam which was visited by 52,000 ships approaching from the Zeiderzee per year, via a series of canals. The projected timescale was 32 years at a cost of £16,000,000. It was estimated that it would take 16 years to pay for itself with suggested income generation coming from renting the land at a rate of £2 per acre per year. However, it was predicted that ancillary benefits such as the resultant increase in employment and the profits from the products produced would potentially see this boosted by the resultant increase in GDP.

In the end it wasn't until the 1930's that the work was eventually initiated with some of the land reclamation shown on the map only completed as recently as 1986. Not all of the proposed extensions happened but the estimated 530,000 acres has proven accurate with an area of around 407,700 having been reclaimed, this represents one fifth of the total land mass of the Netherlands.

This item from the Bartholomew Archive Printing Record is a stark contrast to and visually unique from anything else that I have found. It pre-dates Piet Mondrian's self styled Neo-Plasticism by a good 25 years and whilst you could be forgiven for thinking it was a work of art, as it happens, this is science.

This is a colour chart, not of the paint variety but related to a case of colour blindness. It was printed by Bartholomew on the 9 December 1895 and ran to 780 copies. Printed for the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh it accompanied an article revealing the strange case of Mr A.

Mr A. was a patient of Dr William Peddie, or perhaps more accurately a subject of Dr William Peddie. Dr Peddie was not a medical doctor as you might expect but rather a physicist. He was born on Papa Westray in 1861 going on to study science at Edinburgh University. After graduation he eventually rose to the position of Harris Chair of Physics at University College, Dundee, a post held by him for 35 years. He died only comparatively recently in 1946. One of his particular interests and fields of expertise was colour vision which explains his link to the case. As it happens he was also a Fellow of the RSE and consequently an unsurprising contributor to their Transactions.

Appearing in the 38th edition, Peddie's article is a brief but interesting insight into Mr A.'s condition and how such matters were dealt with by scientists in 1895. Numerous methods and instruments are mentioned including quartz plates, colour discs and colourful powders. There are of course the obligatory equations such as 180 R + 180 B = 133 R + 60 W + 167 Bk. The result of these investigations led Dr Peddie to believe that Mr A. was probably dichromatic rather than monochromatic, a paradox which suggests that he could see both no and some colours at the same time. It appears that there was still much to be learnt by Dr Peddie's generation.

So to the significance of the chart. This is a representation of how you would have seen the world had you been Mr A. Mr A. lacked the ability to distinguish certain colours from one another with differences that might seem blatant to most people meaning nothing to him. To Mr A. the colours in the first column as you go from top to bottom were all identical, the same with the second column. He was also unable to distinguish between the top and bottom pairs of colour in the third column although somehow he knew that they were different. In Peddie's opinion Mr A. was blind to all colours except red.