THE FIRST HANDBOOK DEALING ONLY WITH CARTOGRAPHY
WRITTEN BY SALICHTCHEV
E-mail:pappvary@t-online.hu
Dr. Papp-Váry, Árpád
Hungarian Geographical Society
Max Eckert wrote the first
cartographic manual in 1921 and 1925 under the title: Map Science (Die Kartenwissenschaft). However one chapter of this book also
discussed topography and photogrammetry. The next
cartographic handbook (General Cartography) was written by Erwin Raisz in 1938. He wrote in the preface that in his opinion
topography and photogrammetry must be discussed in
separate books. In spite of this, he also wrote a chapter about topography and fotogrammetry. Konstantin Alexeevitch Salichtchev also
wrote a book about cartography in 1943 and 1944. The title of this great book
was Basics of Cartography (in Russian Osnovi kartovedenia). These two bulky volumes are the first books
about cartography, which do not deal with topography and photogrammetry.
Salichtchev did not consider cartography as a science
of data collection – on the contrary he thought cartography is a science of
visualisation of data. In 1953 Arthur Robinson also came out with a book about
cartography (Elements of Cartography). According to western cartographic
literature the books of Raisz and Robinson are the
first modern cartographic manuals. These two books opened new ways in the
development of cartography in the history of cartography. I think however, that the priority belongs to the book of Salichtchev. It was published during World War II. First
the war and later the iron curtain hindered recognition of this book. In