Arthur H. Robinson Quotes

Arthur H. Robinson was an American geographer and cartographer, who was professor in the Geography Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1947 until he retired in 1980. He was a prolific writer and influential philosopher on cartography, and one of his most notable accomplishments is the Robinson projection of 1961. Wikipedia  

✵ 5. January 1915 – 10. October 2004
Arthur H. Robinson: 18   quotes 0   likes

Famous Arthur H. Robinson Quotes

“Maps enable man to rise, so to speak, above his immediate range of vision, and contemplate the salient features of larger areas.”

Source: Elements of Cartography (1953), p. 1; A cited in: Les Roberts (2012) Mapping Cultures. p. 142

“Our experience in the Cartographic Section of the [OSS Map] Division clearly showed that the creation of a special purpose map was frequently as much a problem in design as it was a problem in substantive compilation.”

Source: The Look of Maps (1952), p. viii: As cited in: J. Crampton (2011) " Arthur Robinson and the Creation of America's First Spy Agency. http://icaci.org/files/documents/ICC_proceedings/ICC2011/Oral%20Presentations%20PDF/B4-Maps,%20GIS,%20security%20and%20planning/CO-174.pdf"

Arthur H. Robinson Quotes

“There are few results of man's activities that so closely parallel man's interests and intellectual capabilities as the map.”

Robinson (1965) as cited in: Matthew H. Edney (2008) " Putting “Cartography” into the History of Cartography: Arthur H. Robinson, David Woodward, and the Creation of a Discipline https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/1830/36-Edney.pdf?sequence=1"

“Today most maps are printed by lithography.”

1978, p. 347
Elements of Cartography (1953)

“The author took the only course in cartography available to him in 1937; it must have been fairly typical of the few being offered in America: lectures based largely on personal experiences were supplemented by a relatively few assigned readings, and by Deetz and Adam’s Elements of Map Projection.”

No textbook was used because there was none in English.
Robinson (1970, p. 189) referring to himself in the third person; As cited in: Jake Coolidge (2009) " Arthur H. Robinson: A Look at a Career http://jakecoolidge.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/arthur-h-robinson-a-look-at-a-career/". Oct 15, 2009

“I decided there ought to be another way of balancing out the various distortions without doing it mathematically.”

Robinson (1990) in The Times; As cited in: Myrna Oliver (2004): About the development of the Robinson projection.

“I started with a kind of artistic approach… I visualized the best-looking shapes and sizes. I worked with the variables until it got to the point where, if I changed one of them, it didn't get any better… [only then I] figure out the mathematical formula to produce that effect.”

Robinson (1988) in The New York Times as cited in: John Noble Wilford (2004) " Arthur H. Robinson, 89, Geographer Who Reinterpreted World Map, Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/15/obituaries/15robinson.html?_r=0" in: The New York Times November 15, 2004: About the development of the Robinson projection.

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