Times Atlas of the World

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The first version of The Times Atlas of the World appeared as The Times Atlas in 1895; more printings followed up to 1900. It was published at the office of The Times newspaper in London, and contained 117 pages of maps with an alphabetical index of 130,000 names. The atlas was a reprint of Cassell & Co.’s Universal Atlas, published in 1893. Cassell's atlas, in turn, used maps in English printed in Leipzig which were drawn from the second edition (with some maps of the third edition) of the German Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas from the publisher Velhagen & Klasing.

The second generation of the atlas was issued in 1920 as The Times Survey Atlas of the World and was prepared at the Edinburgh Geographical Institute under the direction of John George Bartholomew. It contained 112 double page maps with 200,000 names, and measured 47 x 33 centimetres.

The third generation, based on the second, was Bartholomew's famous five-volume set of 19" x 12" elephant folio atlases with 120 plates in eight colors, most maps being double page, and over 200,000 names. The set was issued from 1955-59 as The Times Atlas of the World. Mid-Century Edition by The Times Publishing Company Ltd. in London, (Volume One: The World, Australasia & East Asia. Volume Two: South-West Asia & Russia. Volume Three: Northern Europe. Volume Four: Southern Europe & Africa. Volume Five: The Americas; however, volumes III-V were in fact published first.) A July, 1957 advertisement for The Americas volume suggested that the maps included the latest places of note: "the St. Lawrence Seaway, the newest Federal and Interstate highway systems, ... rocket-launching sites and Atomic Energy installations."

In 1967, an edition in one volume (in which the maps were printed back to back - some on a fractionally smaller scale) was published as The Times Atlas of the World. Comprehensive Edition (with 123 leaves of maps in the 9th edition of 1992). This edition also appeared in a German, a Dutch and a French translation. Its introduction reads: "The successor to [the Mid-Century Edition] in one volume, nevertheless, this work contains greater detail, as well as considerable additional material, with no loss of scale, this being achieved by printing on both sides of the paper, using narrower margins, and including a single index. Some revisions and improvements were made; endpaper keys show which parts of the world are covered by which plates; an international glossary gives the English equivalents of common name-words. Some discoveries by satellite surveys were included."

The 10th or "Millennium" edition (1999) of the 1967 Comprehensive Edition is in effect the first representative of the fourth generation. In contrast to its predecessors, it is completely produced by means of computer-cartography: The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, published by Times Books in London (124 leaves of maps). Contents are slightly different in scale, or in arrangement.