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 Hungary following the communist takeover (1948) a lot of Soviet books were translated into Hungarian. Some of them were very poor (for example those on biology and geography). But the book of Salichtchev was a rare exception. At that time there were already some very good cartographic articles in Hungary, for example the works of Pál Teleki and József Takács. However there wasn’t a comprehensive general book about cartography. The Basics of Cartography of Salichtchev was published in Hungarian in four volumes in 1953. In the same year the Cartographic Department (Department of Map science) was founded at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest.