Description | Digital facsimile of William Smith's geological map of Bath (1799) based on the reconstruction by John Wesley Judd which was coloured by Miss Margaret Reekes, 1897, and laid over a copy of the original base map, 1799. Created by Caroline Lam, Archivist of the Geological Society, December 2014, for the William Smith Bicentenary in 2015. |
Administrative History | Four reconstructions of the map were commissioned by Prof J W Judd in 1897 (see article below), alongside Smith's Map of Strata and Table of Strata, as the originals were so faded. His method was essentially to photograph the originals, and on the facsimile paint over the lines once more to enhance the colour. The other copies were given to the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum [transferred to the British Geological Survey] and the British Library. The Society's reconstruction disappeared sometime before 1999. Therefore for the William Smith Bicentenary, the Archivist sourced a fresh copy of the base map and a scan of BGS' copy in order to combine the two to reconstruct the map as it was fresh. |
Publication Note | Judd, J W. "William Smith's manuscript maps", 'Geological Magazine', vol 4 (1897), pp439-447; Sheppard, T. "William Smith, his maps and memoirs", 'Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society', vol 19 (1920). |