I'm working with some very old maps of Lake Erie that show islands that don't exist.
I've always heard rumor that one country would often put bad data on maps to keep another country from relying on them.
Anyway . . . I always think that things on maps are usually "something", and rarely are things, "nothing".
So I started playing around and started noticing that distances given from port to port(very often very minor rivers and not really "ports"), were pretty much accurate . . . within less than 5% of distance.
I've also now noticed that the distances(as I scaled them), from one fictitious island to the next fictitious island, then the next and the next, actually coincide with what became more major ports, if I just take these "islands" out of the middle of the lake and simply move them to the shoreline.
I've read that these non-existent islands exist on the other great lakes also.
I wonder if anyone else has noticed something similar with very old maps?
Very interesting
I've always heard rumor that one country surveyor would often put bad data on maps to keep another country surveyor from relying on them.
Is that possible?
Young Feller-
A few links that may assist you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes
http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/eng/ccg/home
http://www.charts.gc.ca/charts-cartes/digital-electronique/index-eng.asp
Cheers
Derek
Granted . . . but bad data is bad for everyone.
So, I'm wondering if it was an (secreted)accepted practice to show something, somewhere it shouldn't have been, to indicate something else where it really was?
I can see no reason for islands that didn't exist to be depicted. The worse that would/could happen is a sailing ship would go where the island was depicted and voila. . . no island. But hey, the lake is only about 50 miles wide anyway.
So it only makes sense to indicate ports of call on a map in some manner.
It looks like that manner was the drawing of an island. So that, where ever an island was, and island either really was, or there was a port directly from the position to the shoreline.
Makes sense to me.
I recall in reading Ken Jenning's "MapHead" that surveying/mapping companies used to put bad data or fake things on maps to catch copy-cat companies. If a mapmaker came out with a map showing the same incorrect features, the original mapping company had a case against them for copyright infringement.
Probably a Real Estate Scam
Sell land on islands that don't exist.
Texas Rock Island
Google Earth shows an island called "Texas Rock" in Lake Michigan by Milwaukee...trouble is that there ain't nothin' there but water..no islands anywhere.
Must be one of those "phantom islands"...
Usually the "bad" data was innocuous no-account data that didn't have any significance.
Know one really cared if a road crossroad was named "Hooterville", on the map, when in fact there was no named crossroads at all.
It's not like putting a major town where it doesn't exist and it's not like putting a relatively large island in the middle of Lake Erie.
If the fictional data is the closest thing to nothing . . . it just doesn't really matter.
As I see it, if the fictional data is major, it's either fraud or there's a good hidden reason for it.
I think there was a good hidden reason for showing the fictional islands in Lake Erie.
Texas Rock Island
> island called "Texas Rock" in Lake Michigan by Milwaukee
I think I may have been there in my younger days..;-)
