The Topographic Atlas of Switzerland (
German: ''Topographischer Atlas der Schweiz''), also known as the ''Siegfried Atlas'' or ''Siegfried Map'' (German: ''Siegfriedkarte'';
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
: ''Carte Siegfried'') is an official
map series of
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. Its publication was begun by the
Federal Topographic Bureau under
Hermann Siegfried Hermann or Herrmann may refer to:
* Hermann (name), list of people with this name
* Arminius, chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe in the 1st century, known as Hermann in the German language
* Éditions Hermann, French publisher
* Hermann, Mis ...
, and continued from 1870 to 1926.
During this period the individual maps were drawn by different lithographers, including
Walter Hauenstein,
Georg Christian von Hoven and
Rudolf Leuzinger. Since it is, in today's parlance, not strictly an
atlas but a map series,
map historians now describe it only by the expression ''Siegfried Map''.
The Siegfried Map was based on the original records that had already been created for the earlier
Dufour Map. However, the Siegfried Map offered greater precision than the Dufour Map, by using a scale of 1:25,000 for the
Swiss plateau, the
French Prealps, the
Jura Mountains
The Jura Mountains ( , , , ; french: Massif du Jura; german: Juragebirge; it, Massiccio del Giura, rm, Montagnas da Jura) are a sub-alpine mountain range a short distance north of the Western Alps and mainly demarcate a long part of the Frenc ...
and southern
Ticino, and a scale of 1:50,000 for other mountain regions and the
Swiss Alps
The Alpine region of Switzerland, conventionally referred to as the Swiss Alps (german: Schweizer Alpen, french: Alpes suisses, it, Alpi svizzere, rm, Alps svizras), represents a major natural feature of the country and is, along with the Swiss ...
.
The area covered by the former scale was initially divided into 462 pages, and the other area into 142 pages, with the two areas overlapping in places. A format of x for each page was common to both scales.
Another significant departure from the Dufour Map was the presence of
contours
Contour may refer to:
* Contour (linguistics), a phonetic sound
* Pitch contour
* Contour (camera system), a 3D digital camera system
* Contour, the KDE Plasma 4 interface for tablet devices
* Contour line, a curve along which the function h ...
to symbolize the relief (a granularity of for the 1:25 000 pages, and for the 1:50 000 pages). In addition, three colors were used directly for printing, whereas the Dufour Map was initially monochrome. On the Siegfried Map, the colours used were brown for the contour lines on vegetated terrain, blue for water and contour lines on glaciers, and black for the rest.
The Siegfried Map projection was a cone equivalent, as for the Dufour Map.
The print mode used for the 1:25,000 pages was initially
intaglio, and from 1905 a printing plate. The 1:50,000 pages were printed via a
lithography process, and from 1910 by intaglio.
Until 1949, there were occasional revised editions of Siegfried Map pages. From 1952, the Siegfried and Dufour Maps were replaced by the new
National Map of Switzerland.
External links
Siegfried Map in the map collection of the Swiss Federal Office of TopographyImages of all first editions and later editions of the Siegfried MapOnline access to www.geo.admin.ch
Citations
{{Commons category, Topographischer Atlas der Schweiz, position=left
Map series
Map series of Switzerland
Atlases