I’ve always been a fan of the London Underground design, in particular it’s map. In this post I’ll give you a brief history of the evolution of the map and show you the original map, the modern one and as a geographical location based map (which surprised me with some of the locations).
1908
The first “Underground” map was produced in 1908. Prior to that the 4 separate companies produced their own maps and operated as such. The first map showed 8 lines.
4 from UERL, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited, who initiated the maps production.
UERL lines
Bakerloo Railway / brown
Hampstead Railway / grey
Piccadilly Railway / yellow
District Railway /green
Other lines
Central London Railway / blue
City and South London Railway / black
Great Northern and City Railway / orange
Metropolitan Railway / red
Beck’s Map
The first diagramatic map (similar to the one currently in use today) was produced by Harry Beck in his own time as he felt he could improve it, in 1933.
Beck was an Underground employee who realised that because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get to one station from another — only the topology of the railway mattered.
With circuit board design as an influence, Beck produced a simplified map consisting of stations, straight line segments connecting them, and the River Thames; lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or on 45 degree diagonals. Beck was working as an electrical draughtsman during the time he designed his map
After Beck came Harold Hutchinson. Whilst Hutchinson changed some of the simplicity (less straight lines, cramped areas) he did implement the interchangeable symbols (circles for Underground-only, squares for interchanges with British Rail).
In 1964, Paul Garbutt produced a map, as like Beck had originally, he didn’t like the current one and decided to improve it in his own time.
Garbutt’s map restored curves and bends to the diagram, but retained Hutchinson’s black interchange circles (the squares however were replaced with circles with a dot inside). Garbutt continued to produce Underground maps for at least another 20 years — Tube maps stopped bearing the designer’s name in 1986, by which time the elements of the map bore a very strong resemblance to today’s map.
Today, the current maps bear the legend “This diagram is an evolution of the original design conceived in 1931 by Harry Beck” in the lower right-hand corner.
For more of the history surrounding the development of the London Underground Map, Beck’s legacy and more around the modern history, do visit Wikipedia or the comprehensive History of London Tube Maps.
Geographic Location
There is also the Geographically Accurate Tube Map which is an interactive and more comprehensive version of the below graphic
Yeti Witch
This map is the anagram version of the London Underground map. What’s your favourite. I’m quite liking Yeti Witch and Otters Bend.
