John Ogilby (1600 - 1676)
Profile :
Ogilby was one of the more colourful figures associated with cartography starting life as a dance master and finishing as the Kings Cosmographer and Geographic Printer.
During his life built a theatre in Dublin, translated several Greek and Latin works and set up a successful publishing business. Twice he lost all he owned once in a shipwreck the other in the civil war and the great fire of London in 1666. It was through printing though that he was to become famous organizing a survey of all the main post roads in England and Wales to published the first practical Road Atlas, "Britannia" in 1675. The maps were engraved in strip form, giving details of the roads themselves and descriptive notes of the country on either side, each strip map having a compass rose to indicate a change in direction.
