- Welcome to Map Men. - ...Welcome to Map Men.
- Today we're - ...Today we're
- Hey can you stop that? - ...Hey can you stop that?
- That's really irritating. - ...That's really irritating.
- Stop it! - Stop it!
- I'm an idiot. - You're an idiot.
- Ohhhhh!! - ...Ohhhhh!!
- AAAAAAARGH!!!
♫ Map Men, Map Men ♫ Map Map Map Men, Men
Today we're... talking about the thorny issue of map copying.
As everyone knows, it's not a nice feeling when you've worked very hard on something and somebody steals it.
Like that time I painstakingly drew a fake map of the India Bangladesh border and it turned up in an episode of Geography Now.
In the olden days, map making was an expensive and time consuming business.
When Phylis Pearsall created the iconic A-Z of London in 1936, she had to get up at 5am
and walk around for 18 hours every day writing down all the street names.
AAAAAARRRRGH!!!!!
But thanks to Phyllis's hard work, if I want to make my own map of London today,
All I have to do is copy her map, and then give it a catchy title like
The Top-to-Bottom-Alphabetically-Indexed Map of London, and I'll be rich!
No you won't, snookums. If you try that, you'll be found out.
Pfft! How?
Because the A-Z, like many other maps, is filled with trap streets.
Did you just call me snookums?
Trap streets are unique and deliberately wrong little details designed to cause no problem to the map user
but a big problem for anyone trying to copy it.
Sometimes the cartographer will make a road more bendy.
Or they'll deliberately spell one of the names wrong.
Or, most excitingly, they'll add completely non-existent places.
Excuse me. Does your map show the village 'My Girlfriend'?
Of course, it's here on page 5.
Aha! You stole my map! My Girlfriend doesn't exist. It never has and never will.
- hiss - hiss
Clever in theory. But are there any real examples from real map history of where this has really been done?
There really are.
In 1936, the official map of Boulder County, Colorado contained the fictional Mount Richard
the name of which was chosen at random by the map's creator Richard Ciacci.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Another!
In 1936...
Hang on... that's the third time 1936 has come up this episode.
How strange. I used to live at number 36.
And I'm thinking about the number 36 right now.
Spooky!
In 1936, Esso created a fake town called Agloe on this empty spot on their map of New York State.
But then, in the 1950s, a shop was built on that spot.
and the owners, looking at the Esso map, decided to call it the Agloe General Store.
Years later, another map company called Rand McNally tried to copy Esso's map, and then Esso tried to sue them.
But the joke was on Esso because thanks to the general store, Agloe had now become a real place, and the case was thrown out.
Hahahahaha! Another, more recent one!
- In 2011... - I love how recent that is
The AA were caught copying an Ordnance Survey map and were forced to pay £20 million worth of justice.
Apparently the traps on the OS maps were so sophisticated, it allowed copycats to be caught without publishing anything really inaccurate.
OS said "There are some publishers who put de...liberate mistakes in their maps. We don't do that."
The problem is, trap streets, by their nature, are very tricky to find.
In fact, if you ask map makers if their maps have any inaccuracies, they deny it.
- Hello? - Hi. Is your map full of mistakes?
- No it's not.
See?
So we've made it our mission to set out and find examples of trap streets that can be seen in up-to-date maps you can buy today.
Right. Off we go!
Wait... if you can teleport, why are we in a car?
There's one!
According to the 2005 A-Z, there's a road going through this park called Whitfield Road.
But there isn't. - No there isn't.
Aha!
This here is Book Mews. But the A-Z calls it "Brook Mews".
Cheeky!
Oh look, there's another one.
Google Maps says there should be an entire town called Argleton here. But in real life it's just an empty field.
But of course it's pretty easy to catch out a Google Maps trap street, because all you have to do is click satellite view.
And anyone who wants to make their own map can just copy that.
Which is basically what everyone does and nobody cares.
If you can think of any trap streets that we've missed, and want to mention it in the comments section below,
- Don't. - Don't. - Don't. - Don't. - Don't. - Don't. - Don't- Don't.
- Thanks. - Don't.
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What? That's not a good enough explanation.
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Finland tastes great.
♫ ♫ ♫