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. Furthermore, atlases of anatomy exist, mapping out the human body or other organisms. 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.
The word atlas dates from 1636, first in reference to the English translation of Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi (1585) by Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator, who might have been the first to use this word in this way. A picture of the Titan Atlas holding up the world appeared on the frontispiece of this and other early map collections.
The first work that contained systematically arranged woodcut maps of uniform size, intended to be published in a book, thus representing the first modern atlas, was De Summa totius Orbis (1524–26) by the 16th-century Italian cartographer Pietro Coppo. Nonetheless, this distinction is conventionally awarded to the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius who in 1570 published the collection of maps Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
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.
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.
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 from an open subset U of M to an open subset of Euclidean space. The chart is traditionally recorded as the ordered pair
.
An atlas for a topological space M is a collection of charts on M such that
. 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.
TRAX (originally The TRAX) is a South Korean rock band formed in the summer of July 17, 2004 by S.M. Entertainment and formerly produced by X Japan's co-founder Yoshiki. The name "TRAX" refers to "recording tracks", but also stands for the first letter of each original member's stage name, Typhoon of the Rose Attack on X-Mas. Originally a nu metal and alternative rock band, they changed to a straight pop rock sound when drummer Rose left in 2006.
In 2000, S.M. Entertainment decided to produce a rock group, which took them four years to materialize. The TRAX members, Typhoon, Rose, and Attack first appeared in the "2002 Survival Audition HeeJun vs. KangTa Battle of the Century" along with former TVXQ member Xiah Junsu and Super Junior's Sungmin and Eunhyuk.
The band made their first public appearance for BoA's eleventh single "Rock With You" in December 2003. TRAX held its first concert on July 26, 2004 at Ziller Hall. They were featured in TVXQ's first two albums, Tri-Angle and Rising Sun. The band promoted in both South Korea and Japan with mixed success.