Hey Mark. What country am I supposed to be?
Haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw.
Offensive France?
Bienvenue à Hommes Cartes.
- Nous sommes les hommes - Et voilà! La carte!
♫ Hommes cartes, hommes cartes ♫ Hommes hommes hommes cartes cartes
The Cassini family map of France is quite possibly the most incredible map ever made.
- Considering how old it is... - Very, it's astonishing how accurate it is.
- Also very. - And the story behind it is pretty astonishing too.
Before the Cassinis, the best map of France looked like this. Not bad...
But also, definitely not good.
In those days, maps weren't very precise, they were more like works of art.
But King Louis X-I-V wanted to know exactly what he was king of
and he wanted a great big map on his bedroom wall.
So he called his cartopgrapher friend Giovanni Cassini.
Monsieur... euh... je voudrais... un carte...
- Une carte? - Une carte! Oui, une carte...
euh... très grande... de mon...
France.
Bof! Je commence.
But of course it was a lot trickier than just saying "bof".
When Cassini googled satellite photography,
he found an article saying that it wouldn't be invented for another 300 years.
So Cassini had no option but to use an old fashioned yet ingenious process called triangulation.
Triangulation works by making triangles.
You start by measuring the distance between two points.
Then you spy out a third point and measure the angles towards it with a massive protractor.
- Using these measurements - And a bit of maths
You can plot a stunningly accurate triangle on your map, no matter how big or bumpy the terrain is.
Simply repeat the process over and over again, et voilà! A complete, and thoroughly accurate map.
Cassini travelled around France with his triangle measuring machinery for years and years
until he was too dead to carry on.
So his son, Cassini Junior, took over from his dead dad and continued measuring.
Then Cassini Junior died and was replaced by his son Cassini Junior Junior, the first Cassini's grandson.
- They had first names, you know. - No one cares.
Back then, France was mostly a poverty-stricken rural backwater
and not overly partial to the arrival of strangers.
Plus ça change!
This made map-making a dangerous endeavour.
In 1740, the villagers in Les Estables bRRutaly hacked one of Cassini's surveyors to death
believing their strange tools and modern science were the cause of their failed harvest.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
ow, bang, ow, ow, bang, bang.
But eventually the Cassinis covered all 600,000 square French kilometres of France
and produced this - a map made entirely of triangles.
The king, who by now was a different king, was delighted... until he noticed something wrong.
Zut alors! Qu'est-ce que c'est!?
Is zere a problem?
My country is twenty percent smaller zan I thought it was.
You have taken more from me zan I won in all my wars.
I actually said zis.
But Your Highness, you literally asked for an accurate map!
Well you could at least bozzer to fill it in with some details like, er... villages and rivers
so it's not just [BEEP] triangles!
So Cassini Junior Junior set about turning his very accurate map into a very useful map.
Every church, every farm, every copse, every petrol station was painstakingly marked
in the very first modern map of its kind.
And then Cassini Junior Junior died, and was replaced by Cassini Junior Junior II, until the job was finished.
Four generations of the same family taking over 120 years to complete a task
is a pretty impressive level of commitment.
In today's terms, that's like someone watching a YouTube video all the way to the end.
(They laugh.)
In 1793, the Cassini family's now completed, enormous, 12 by 11 metre map
comprising 182 sheets of incroyable detail, was proudly...
stolen... by the people who'd executed the King the year before.
Napoleon decided the Cassini family's long association with the crown made them enemies of the Revolution.
And so they confiscated the map, prevented its public use, and threw Cassini in jail.
Napoleon milked the map for magnificent military manoeuvres.
Bof!
It also inspired the Ordnance Survey maps here in Britain
and ushered in an age where maps were less about art and more about accurate accuracy.
How astonishing. But perhaps the most astonishing thing about... [ALARM]
Oh! That's my time up. Now time for my son to take over.
Your son?
Yep! Here you go, Jay Junior.
Just carry on where I left off.
Haw haw haw haw hee haw haw haw haw.
I didn't know he had a son.
Yes, one flight to Boston please.
Oh, are you going on holiday to Boston?
No, it's not a holiday. I've just got a question about Napoleon that I need to ask an Ivy League professor.
You know an Ivy League professor?
No, I'm just going to chance it and knock on lots of doors.
You won't be successful.
Yes I will. I've been practising. Look.
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The Great Courses what?
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Whoever committed this crime left these footprints in the fridge.
Who leave footprints in the fridge?
I've checked the national footprint database, and there doesn't seem to be a match.
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Oops.
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Oh, I practised my knocking for nothing.
♫ Au coeur de la Transylvanie.
♫ Dans le château des vampires.
♫ Il n'y a pas de vampire plus fou que Ducule.
♫ Il ne mordra ni la bête ni l'homme
♫ parce qu'il est végétarien
♫ Et les choses ne vont jamais comme prévu pour Ducule.