For other uses, see Atlas (disambiguation).

A political and physical map of the world from 2006

An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a map of Earth or a region of Earth, but there are atlases of the other planets (and their satellites) in the Solar System. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic features and political boundaries, many atlases often feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics. They also have information about the map and places in it.

1 "Atlas" mythology
2 Modern atlas
3 Selected general atlases
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

"Atlas" mythology [link]

The origin of the term atlas is a common source of misconception, perhaps because two different mythical figures named 'Atlas' are associated with map making.

King Atlas, a mythical King of Mauretania, also known as Aparajit in Hinduism, was according to legend a wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who supposedly made the first celestial globe. It was this Atlas to whom Gerardus Mercator was referring when he first used the name "atlas",^[1]^[2] and he included a depiction of the King on the title-page.^[2]
However, the more widely known Atlas is a figure from Greek mythology. He is the son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene (or Asia), and brother of Prometheus. Atlas was punished by Zeus and made to bear the weight of the heavens (the idea of Atlas carrying the Earth is not correct according to the original myth) on his back. One of Heracles's labours was to collect the apples of the Hesperides, guarded by Ladon. Heracles went to Atlas and reasoned with him. Eventually, Atlas agreed to collect the apples, and Heracles was left to carry the weight. Atlas tried to leave Heracles there, but Heracles tricked him and Atlas was left to carry the heavens forever. In his epic Odyssey, Homer refers to this Atlas as "one who knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps the tall pillars who hold heaven and earth asunder".

In works of art, this Atlas is represented as carrying the heavens or the Celestial Sphere, on his shoulders. The earliest such depiction is the Farnese Atlas, now housed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli in Naples, Italy. This figure is frequently found on the cover or title-pages of atlases. This is particularly true of atlases published by Dutch publishers during the second half of the seventeenth century. The image became associated with Dutch merchants, and a statue of this figure adorns the front of the World Trade Center in Amsterdam.

The first publisher to associate the Titan Atlas with a group of maps was Lafreri, on the title-page to "Tavole Moderne Di Geografia De La Maggior Parte Del Mondo Di Diversi Autori ...". However, he did not use the word "atlas" in the title of his work.

Modern atlas [link]

With the coming of the global market, publishers in different countries can reprint maps from plates made elsewhere. This means that the place names on the maps often use the designations or abbreviations of the language of the country in which the feature is located, to serve the widest market. For example, islands near Russia have the abbreviation "O." for "ostrov", not "I." for "island". This practice differs from what is standard for any given language, and it reaches its extremity concerning transliterations from other languages. Particularly, German mapmakers use the transliterations from Cyrillic developed by the Czechs which are hardly used in English-speaking countries.

Selected general atlases [link]

Main article: List of atlases

Some cartographically or commercially important atlases include the following:

17th century and earlier

Atlas Novus (Blaeu, Netherlands, 1635–1658)
Atlas Maior (Blaeu, Netherlands, 1662–1667)
Cartes générales de toutes les parties du monde (France, 1658–1676)
Dell'Arcano del Mare (England/Italy, 1645–1661)
Piri Reis map (Ottoman Empire, 1570–1612)
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Ortelius, Netherlands, 1570–1612)
Klencke Atlas (1660; world's largest book)
The Brittania (John Ogilby, 1670–1676)

18th century

Atlas Nouveau (Amsterdam, 1742)
Britannia Depicta (London, 1720)
Cary's New and Correct English Atlas (London, 1787)

19th century

Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas (Germany, 1881–1939; in the UK as Times Atlas of the World, 1895)
Rand McNally Atlas (United States, 1881–present)
Stielers Handatlas (Germany, 1817–1944)

20th century

Atlante Internazionale del Touring Club Italiano (Italy, 1927–1978)
Atlas Mira (Russia, 1937–present)
Gran Atlas Aguilar (Spain, 1969/1970)
The Historical Atlas of China (China)
National Geographic Atlas of the World (United States, 1963–present)
Pergamon World Atlas (1962/1968)
Times Atlas of the World (United Kingdom, 1895–present)

21st century

North American Environmental Atlas

References [link]

^ "Mercator, father of the atlas, turns 500". German Embassy's Department for Press, Information and Public Affairs. 6 March 2012. https://www.india.diplo.de/Vertretung/indien/en/__pr/About__Germany__News/Mercator.html. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
^ ^a ^b Mark S. Monmonier (2004). Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-53431-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=nvwu4Ba_Qp0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Rhumb+Lines+and+Map+Wars&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fipYT93uIYHWgQeapaWxDA&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=ancient%20ruler%20of%20Mauritania&f=false.

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Atlas

Sources

On the origin of the term "Atlas"

Online atlases

World Atlas
ÖROK-Atlas Online: Atlas on spatial development in Austria
Geography Network
MapChart EarthAtlas, free online atlas with interactive maps about topics like demography, economy, health and environment.
National Geographic MapMachine

History of atlases

Atlases, at the US Library of Congress site - a discussion of many significant atlases, with some illustrations. Part of Geography and Maps, an Illustrated Guide.

Historical atlases online

Centennia Historical Atlas required reading at the US Naval Academy for over a decade.
Historical map web sites list, Perry-Castañeda Library, University of Texas
Ryhiner Collection Composite atlas with maps, plans and views from the 16th-18th centuries, covering the globe, with about 16,000 images in total.

Other links

Google Earth: a visual 3D interactive atlas.
NASA's World Wind software.
Wikimapia a wikiproject designed to describe the entire world.

v t e Atlas

Atlas Cartography Geography Map Map projection Topography

Early world maps History of cartography List of cartographers

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https://wn.com/Atlas

Atlas (computer)

The Atlas Computer was a joint development between the University of Manchester, Ferranti, and Plessey. The first Atlas, installed at Manchester University and officially commissioned in 1962, was one of the world's first supercomputers, considered to be the most powerful computer in the world at that time. It was said that whenever Atlas went offline half of the United Kingdom's computer capacity was lost. It was a second-generation machine, using discrete germanium transistors. Two other Atlas machines were built: one for British Petroleum and the University of London, and one for the Atlas Computer Laboratory at Chilton near Oxford.

A derivative system was built by Ferranti for Cambridge University. Called the Titan, or Atlas 2, it had a different memory organisation and ran a time-sharing operating system developed by Cambridge University Computer Laboratory. Two further Atlas 2s were delivered: one to the CAD Centre in Cambridge (later called CADCentre, then AVEVA), and the other to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE), Aldermaston.

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Atlas_(computer)

Atlas (topology)

In mathematics, particularly topology, one describes a manifold using an atlas. An atlas consists of individual charts that, roughly speaking, describe individual regions of the manifold. If the manifold is the surface of the Earth, then an atlas has its more common meaning. In general, the notion of atlas underlies the formal definition of a manifold and related structures such as vector bundles and other fibre bundles.

Charts

The definition of an atlas depends on the notion of a chart. A chart for a topological space M (also called a coordinate chart, coordinate patch, coordinate map, or local frame) is a homeomorphism $\varphi$ from an open subset U of M to an open subset of Euclidean space. The chart is traditionally recorded as the ordered pair $(U, \varphi)$ .

Formal definition of atlas

An atlas for a topological space M is a collection $\{(U_{\alpha}, \varphi_{\alpha})\}$ of charts on M such that $\bigcup U_{\alpha} = M$ . If the codomain of each chart is the n-dimensional Euclidean space and the atlas is connected, then M is said to be an n-dimensional manifold.