New train stations and airports appear, an old gunpowder factory disappears. Every 5 or 10 years, Swisstopo redraws its maps, incorporating the latest technology and changes. Switzerland’s cartographic history spans 175 years. It seems plausible that a little tomfoolery functions as a release valve for them.Īnother theory is that the culprits were simply trying to have fun at the expense of their “highly accurate” colleagues at Swisstopo. One cartography professor from ETH Zurich suggested that people in his profession tend to be “meticulous, really high-precision… high levels of concentration”. More likely, the cartographers were simply breaking the monotony of their meticulous daily routine. A cartographer purposefully placed the false street, which Apple Maps then unwittingly showed on their platform. One particularly famous example of Trap Street was Edinburgh’s Oxygen Street. The idea was to catch anyone who replicated the map unlawfully. One charitable theory suggests that the illustrators left deliberate flaws as a copyright trap (known as Trap Street). Perhaps they hoped to leave a small, lasting legacy among the hard work that often goes unnoticed. And cartographers are also just human beings trying to fool around.”
![cartographica map man cartographica map man](https://i.etsystatic.com/11246694/r/il/1d62cc/1122598647/il_fullxfull.1122598647_e8gm.jpg)
One current Swisstopo employee told Eye On Design magazine, “The proofreader is also just a human being prone to failure. The cartographers always positioned their illustrations far from cities, where fewer eyes saw them. Their mandate is to render the “real world” in precise detail, without errors.Īlthough the artists themselves have remained silent about their antics, the drawings likely occurred during the final stages of proofreading. Their job strictly entails compiling analytical geographic data. The findings reveal an unusual streak of whimsy in cartographers. The Italian climber remains in the current edition.Ī hidden climber on an Italian mountainside. When the company uncovers a rogue design, they remove it from circulation when updating the map. The marmot turned up five years later, in 2017. His aim was to leave reality undisturbed and to place the marmot in its natural environment.Ī sketch of a naked reclining woman hidden in a map of a northern Swiss village was drawn in 1958 and uncovered almost 60 years later, in 2012. Cartographers at Swisstopo have a mandate, they added: “to reconstitute reality”.Įhrlich confessed that he had thought of several places in which to hide a drawing. “Creativity has no place on these maps,” said a spokesperson for Swisstopo. Needless to say, Swisstopo hasn’t commended its budding artists. He left the work as a parting gift shortly before his retirement in 2011.
![cartographica map man cartographica map man](https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/215806/ck2_2.png)
The company, wise to the game by now, eventually identified Paul Ehrlich, who specialized in rock drawings, as the illustrator. The artist blended it into a rock formation. The most recent find is a marmot hidden within the contour lines of the Swiss Alps. Later, in the 1990s, Siegfried sneaked in a climber ascending an Italian mountain within contour lines, his specialty. It probably honors an April 1 inauguration, which some European countries celebrate by attaching an “April Fish” to the backs of shirts.
![cartographica map man cartographica map man](https://exchange.nottingham.ac.uk/content/uploads/145903682-920x400.jpg)
The author, cartographer Friedrich Siegfried, blended it subtly into its native environment, a French nature preserve. The next discovery was a fish northwest of the town of Interlaken, Switzerland. One cartographer carefully blended a fish into its natural habitat.