The Tube Map is an icon of London, just like Big Ben the Tower of
London the London Eye and M&Ms World. It's instantly recognisable
to locals and tourists alike known and loved and parodied
all over the world. With a new version coming out
every few months, some people are properly
obsessed with the Tube Map with vast collections and can spot the subtlest of differences between different versions. Eurgh. Look at them. Massive bunch of nerds. But don't take this map for granted. This map very nearly looked very different and the London it's a map of might
have looked very different as a result. So, what is the story behind this map? 🎵🎵🎵 In the mid-mid 19th century when
privately run underground railway lines first started popping down all under London the only maps of them available were the ones published by the private companies themselves showing their own services in clear bold,
and rival services, if they felt like it in narrow faint lines they
didn't want you to notice. Because rival companies were often
competing for the same passengers they very often went out of
their way to be uncooperative. This circular route was operated by two
rival companies who hated each other. The Metropolitan Railway ran trains clockwise and the confusingly similarly named Metropolitan District Railway ran trains anti-clockwise. Long story. If you wanted to go just one stop but you
bought your ticket from the wrong booth you had to go the long way round the circle. And there were plenty more examples of
uncooperativeness where this came from. For example, if you wanted to
change trains at Bank station you had to take the lift up to the
street, cross the road, buy another ticket and then take the lift all
the way back down again. London's underground Railways
could have been so much more useful and attracted so many more passengers if they were all run together
as a coordinated system. But it would take someone with a colossal
bank account to make that happen. Fortunately for Londoners, in
1902 that someone came along in the form of ambitious American
railway Tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes who had a colossal bank
account, a colossal moustache and a wife called Guttridge. This is my wife. Go on, tell them your name. Guttridge. Charles's very American idea
was to run a railway network a group of lines stretching in
all directions across the city where with one ticket, you could start your
journey on one line and end it on another. So he set up a company called
Underground Electric Railways of London Or UERL for short. Or ooerrl for shorter. With all the money he'd piled, up he went
on an underground railway shopping spree including four lines that
hadn't even been finished yet. By November 1905, Charles Yerkes was
the proud owner of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead, Metropolitan District, Great Northern, Brompton and Piccadilly,
Baker Street and Waterloo Railways. And by December 1905, he was dead. With the very shrewd move of dying, he avoided having to pay back any
of the huge debts he'd built up. But his dream of creating an underground
network in London had come true. The UERL was a properly integrated
system with common ticketing and station buildings that looked really similar. And a proper network needed a proper map. And so in 1908 the UERL published this. The first map that showed all the
underground lines in London mapped on one map, including the ones UERL didn't own. It had some really handy innovations. Each line was given equal thickness, and
each line was given a different colour. Features that are familiar to us today Even if the colours aren't too familiar. The Piccadilly line in yellow!? Hahahahaha!! This complete map of the
whole network was very useful But it wasn't very easy to read. With all the Tube lines and roads and landmarks and... army and navy and auxiliary stores? It was a messy clutter with too much information and looked like a plate of spaghetti. The problem was, the task of
creating a map of the whole network that was both useful and easy to
read was a notoriously difficult one. Lots of companies at this time published
their own maps of London's network each with their own approaches,
some of them bonkers. This one's my favorite: The
Wonderground Map by Max Gill. Simultaneously incredibly detailed
and incredibly completely useless. Mapping the entire system was only
about to get even difficulter. By the early 20s the London Underground had begun sprawling uncontrollably out in all
directions into the distant suburbs. To help manage this growth, the UERL
appointed a new head of publicity, Frank Pick. Pick was obsessed with the
Tube's corporate identity the notion that the whole system
should feel more... togethery. It was Pick's idea for every
station to have a roundel, the iconic logo with the red circle and blue line. And for every sign to use the same font with the perfectly round O's and the little
diamonds for dots above the I's. And to commission all those lovely posters that your middle class friends have in their kitchens. Most importantly Pick wanted every
leaflet and every poster on every train on every platform and every
station to use the same map design. And so, in search of the perfect map, Pick turned to a designer named... altogether now... - (audience) Harry Beck.
- Frank Stingemore. Aaah! Frank Stingemore's map from 1924 used the River Thames as a geographical reference and nothing else. No roads, no landmarks, no nothing. Just a plain beige background. With easiness of reading at the
top of Stingemore's priority list his map did something that was basically cheating. To fit all the detail in Stingemore took the naughty shortcut of not bothering to
draw the distant suburbs to scale. For example, these stations on
what we now call the Northern line were bunched dishonestly together in
a totally fictional straight line. But the thing is though.. that's the thing... The thing is, this, this is the thing... The thing is... this didn't matter! For passengers trying to get
from station A to station B this map still served its purpose perfectly well. Unless you were driving the train, why
did you need to know the exact length or exact bendiness of each bit of track? Come to think of it, even if you're driving the train you don't really need
to know that either do you? Frank Pick was very happy with Stingemore's map and the public were happy with it too. Stingemore's innovation had shown
that a map could still be useful even if the scale was distorted. And it was this concept that inspired another designer to do something even more radical And his name was... - (Is it Harry Beck?)
- (It's got to be.) - (It wasn't last time.)
- (I think it's Harry Beck.) - (Shall we say Harry Beck?)
- (What if it's not Harry Beck?) - (I think it is this time.)
- (Let's say Harry Be...) Harry Beck! Henry Charles Beck, known
as Harry to his no friends was a 29 year old technical
draftsman working at UERL. It was his job to draw up diagrams
of the Tube's signaling systems. And then it wasn't his job anymore
when he got made redundant in 1931. Harry must have really missed his old
job, because after leaving the UERL he spent his spare time working on an
extremely nerdy work-related project. He nerdly imagined what it would look like if all the stations on the London Underground were represented connected like in a circuit diagram. He'd seen strip maps of individual
lines that totally ignored geography. How hard could it be to combine them all together? While Stingemore's approach was to
be a little bit naughty with scale Beck's approach was that scale
could absolutely go [BEEP] itself. Harry drew the entire network
using only strrrraight lines that were vertical, horizontal or at 45 degrees. Here's one of his rough drafts where he rubbed
out lines and replaced them with straighter ones. When he finally finished it looked like this. An elegant colourful design with the stations
in central London spaced evenly apart and the suburban stations
bunched up close together. No opportunity was missed for symmetry equal spacing and parallelity. If you compare his design to a scale map you can see just how not to scale and frankly mad it was. Harry's so-called "Journey Planner"
was not a map - it was a diagram. But for the very specific job it was trying
to do, a diagram was better than a map. By totally ignoring the concept of scale, he was able not only to fit all the stations in but to make it much easier to
read than Stingemore's map. It also gave the impression of a cohesive, comprehensive, coordinated, connected system. It also looked awesome. Harry was very pleased with himself
and a thought occurred to him... This should be the official
map for London Transport. Frank Pick is going to love this! And so, later in 1931, Harry marched
back into the offices of the UERL which was now called London Transport to show his diagram to Frank Pick. But Harry was wrong. Frank Pick didn't love Harry's map at all. Pick refused to publish Beck's map on
the grounds that it was "inaccurate" and that the public wouldn't understand it. There was indeed a disadvantage
to the scale-free approach. Some stations looked much further
apart than they really were which might make tourists crowd
onto the tube for needless journeys such as Queen's Road to Bayswater which you can easily do on foot in 19.19 seconds. But Harry Beck was convinced that his design was the future of the London Underground and tried several times to persuade Frank Pick. Eventually, Frank Pick gave in and agreed that if Harry Beck
agreed to leave him alone he'd agree to print a very limited trial run. A small handful of copies were printed
and sent to a small handful of stations with an apologetic cover saying "A new design for an old map. We
should welcome your comments." To the surprise of Pick and
the I told you so of Beck, the comments they welcomed
were overwhelmingly positive. The public seemed to have no trouble
understanding Beck's concept. They bloomin' loved it! In 1933, Harry Beck's diagram officially
replaced Frank Stingemore's map as the standard journey planner used on all leaflets and all posters
across the London Underground. Harry Beck had done it! But little did he know things were
about to go very very wrong for him. Want to find out more? Stay exactly where you are and wait
for the next dose of Unfinished London. Hi folks, just to say, thank
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