A man and his map

The man who created the modern science of geology was a blacksmith's son named William Smith. The fact of his parentage, which seems innocuous to us, was to have enormous consequences for his career. In The Map That Changed The World, Simon Winchester tells the story of Smith, of the extraordinary geological map of England that he created, and of the birth of a new science.

He also shows how culture has changed since the day that Smith was cheated of recognition for his accomplishments because of his ungentlemanly birth.

Smith was born in 1769, and as a boy he liked fossils. No one really knew what fossils were at that time; nor could they explain how they were distributed, or what they implied. But many fashionable people collected them and displayed them in beautiful cases.

William Smith was not a fashionable person: he was an engineer and a surveyor, and during his work - prospecting coal mines, developing drainage systems, and surveying canals - he collected fossils, observed underground rock formations, and came to understand fundamental truths about the layers of sedimentary rock that make up most of England. Winchester shows how extraordinary Smith's accomplishment was - the layers of rock he observed had been seen many, many times before, but Smith was the first to formulate a theory of exactly what they meant. He embarked upon a monumental project, published in 1815: a huge, hand-colored map that accurately showed the geological underpinnings of England.

Smith was unacceptable to the members of the fashionable Royal Geographical Society, founded in 1807. It wasn't merely that the Society didn't invite him to join. When they learned of the enormous, important map that he was making, Society members decided to make their own, official map, with the Royal Geographical Society's stamp of approval. They stole his data to do it.

The Map That Changed the World is full of fascinating facts, about fossils and stones, drainage, canals, coal mining, cartography and book publishing. It's also the story of a brilliant man and the monumental challenges he faced in getting recognition for his work, all because he was the son of a blacksmith.