Background

The first U.S. Government-produced nautical chart, a black and white print made in 1835 from a stone engraving, was of Bridgeport Harbor, Connecticut. Although lacking in the detail of today's charts, it was compiled to an exceptional cartographic accuracy that has been a consistent characteristic of U.S. nautical charts throughout the years. Acquisition of a copperplate printing press in 1842 enabled the Coast Survey to publish a chart of New York Bay and Harbor in 1844 with finer definition than was possible from stone engravings. The addition of color, first added to the charts by hand in the 1800's and then by color lithographic processes in the early 1900's, enhanced the usefulness of the charts.

The Historical Map & Chart Collection Project began when it became necessary for preservation efforts to transfer a repository of historical charts and maps, housed in a warehouse environment, to the National Archives. Before transfer, Coast Survey decided to produce high resolution scans of each historical document and make them freely available to researchers, educators and the general public via the Internet.

In 1996, the first 1,700 images were made available to the public through the Internet site using GIF and TIFF images. The Collection's site allowed users to search though established catalogs by type, state or locale. Each catalog gave the user the date of the map, a brief description and the opportunity to preview the 100 dpi image in the browser or download the high resolution 300 dpi image for individual desktop applications. While this approach was suitable for black and white images, color images were a magnitude larger and made downloading impracticable.

Revised Friday February 01 2008by OCS Webmaster