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A local educational-resource company is vying to put Amherst on the map.
ODT Maps, Inc., an Amherst-based developer and manufacturer of maps, globes and other geographic resources, unveiled an equal-area map of the United States on September 7. This map, touted by founder and community activist Bob Abramms as one that will "blow people's minds," presents the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii-as well as unincorporated territory Puerto Rico according to their relative size.
The purpose of an equal-area map is to provide students, educators and other appreciators of geography paraphernalia with a clear representation of the relative size of the United States. Abramms and his staff were concerned that the status quo in visual representations of the U.S. obscured the physical magnitude of Alaska, often representing it as visually smaller than Texas and left the territory of Puerto Rice largely ignored. Abramms was especially concerned with the vast majority of educational maps that did not included Puerto Rico, "turning a blind eye to four million citizens."
The creation of the equal-area map came to Abramms about ten years ago when an Alaskan map storeowner who was frustrated that he could not provide students with an accurate representation of their own state contacted him. "I was stunned to find out that there was no equal-area map of the U. S.," said Abramms.
So Abramms and the rest of the staff at ODT, which had shifted its focus from management consulting to map publication, set to work. Over time ODT found that although they weren't the only company putting out equal-area maps, those that did were "few and far between," and were often too obscure to be utilized by mainstream publishers.
The mapmakers at ODT were frustrated with the visual representations used by large publishers of geographic media like National Geographic and Universal and sought to "bring equal area maps to the mainstream."
The self-described "innovative map publishers" at ODT Maps offer, in addition to their recently-released equal area maps, a number of unconventional representations of the United States and the globe.
The Van der Grinten Projection presents a south-at-the-top perspective of the world. The equal-area Peters Map places the Pacific Ocean, rather than the Atlantic, at its center. This alternate projection of the globe raised a few eyebrows with its creation, and producers of NBC's "The West Wing" turned to ODT Maps for use of the projection on their show. ODT Maps also offers a litany of various projections placing Africa at its center, as well as projections representing population.
The concept behind the various alternate projections is an acknowledgement on part of ODT of the biases inherent in conventional mapmaking. Few educational resources are entirely free from bias and mapmaking, Abramms insists, is no exception.
"We want to give everybody a fair airing of their views," said Abramms in reference to the equal-area U.S. projection, "and we're doing it with this map."
ODT also offers a version of the Mercator projection but expresses disdain at its obscured representation of size. The map was developed in 1569 for use in navigation; and although it provides useful representation of the planet's oceans, it has caused controversy with how it represents certain countries. Greenland is shown to be nearly equal in size to Africa-a land mass 14 times bigger than itself- while Alaska is represented as being bigger than Brazil when, in reality, it is five times smaller.
It's these sort of geographic misrepresentations that ODT Maps finds to be vastly politically incorrect and their more progressive approach to mapmaking has found a receptive audience in the geopolitically aware Amherst community.
"We've got a lot of new fans in the Pioneer Valley," said Abramms.
S.P. Sullivan can be reached at spsulliv@student.umass.edu.
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