London is an ancient city dating back 2000 years. The Romans founded the first recorded settlements around 47 AD. The Roman conquest lasted until around the 5th century, and various Roman ruins can still be found in the city.
3/ In 1066 the Normans conquered England, and then decided to take an inventory. The result was the Domesday Book, a comprehensive survey of the country, including around London.
Back in 2012 Anna Powell-Smith presented "Open Domesday" at Geomob London - a project to overlay the survey results on a modern map: https://opendomesday.org
4/ London would became a great port - but there was a problem: navigation remained challenging - specifically determining longitude.
In 1675 the Royal Observatory was established in Greenwich, East London "so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation".
5/ In 1854 an outbreak of cholera hit Soho in central London, killing hundreds.
Dr. John Snow, a believer in the theory that unseeable, waterborne "germs" caused the disease, plotted the cases on map to find the infected water pump that was responsible for the outbreak.
7/ In 1884 an international convention met in Washington DC 🇺🇸, and the Greenwich meridian, passing through the Greenwich Observatory, was agreed to be the 0 line of longitude, the so-called "Prime Meridian"
8/ Not much later Charles Booth meticulously surveyed the demographics of London to create his famous "Life and Labour of the People in London", the first example of a "poverty map" showing the spatial distribution of poverty and inequality in the city.
8/ In 1931 cartography changed forever when technical draughtsman Harry Beck represented the London Underground network as a schematic diagram rather than a geographically correct map.
9/ London has evolved, and with it the maddening complexity of its
admin divisions.
"Greater London" is 32 local authority districts.
Confusingly this includes the City of Westminster, but not the City of London (why many admin maps of London have a hole at the center). Some are "Royal" boroughs, some are not.
10/ The City of London - traditionally marked by dragon boundary posts - is run by a corporation, though there is no surviving record of a charter first establishing the Corporation as a legal body.
11/ London is sometimes still referred to as "The Big Smoke", a reference to the terrible pollution of the past, but these days the city is quite green
Indeed, it is classified as a forest.
50% of London is covered in green space, and an incredible 8 million trees are dotted across the capital.
12/ In August of 2004, Steve Coast, then a student at University College London (UCL - site of last week's Geomob London) started ... OpenStreetMap!
The project has come a looooong way since back then (see attached screenshot), and is the basis for OpenCage and many, many other geospatial services around the world.
Last summer for OSM's 19th birthday @freyfogle spoke with @gravitystorm on the Geomob podcast about the early days of OSM:
15/ Sorry, one more - forgot to include this delightful snap from 2014 of OpenCage co-founders @freyfogle and @mtmail with @vicchi (our "geotechnologist in residence" who helped us launch the service) standing at the Prime Meridian.
@opencage The City of London logo is also found on posts in deepest Surrey. These marked the boundary where a tax had to be paid on coal brought into London. https://flic.kr/p/t1cTGx
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