• Title : The Evening News London "Tube Map"
• Date : 1907-10
  
• Size: 24in x 20in (610mm x 510mm)
• Condition: (A) Very Good Condition
• Ref:  27100

Description:
This original folding lithograph London Underground Antique Map was designed by the London Geographical Institute & printed by George Philip & Son for the Evening News, London between 1907 to 1910. On the verso is the London Tram Map.

The Evening News London Tube map & Guide ran from 1907-1910. At its release in 1907 it predated the first official 'unified' London Underground map (published in 1908). The EN Tube map was the first to refer to the wider network of Underground Railways as the 'Tube'; it was among the first to apply colour-coding for the lines and is widely believed to be the origin of the name 'Bakerloo' for the Baker Street & Waterloo Railway.
This map design would later be used as a basis for the official London Underground Railways pocket map in 1912.

General Definitions:
Paper thickness and quality: - Heavy and stable
Paper color : - off white
Age of map color: - Original
Colors used: - Blue, red, yellow, purple, green
General color appearance: - Authentic
Paper size: - 24in x 20in (610mm x 510mm)
Plate size: - 24in x 20in (610mm x 510mm)
Margins: - Min 1/2in (12mm)

Imperfections:
Margins: - Creasing in margings
Plate area: - Light wear along folds
Verso: - Light wear along folds

Background:
As Londons early transport system was operated by a variety of independent companies, there were no complete maps of the network, just for the individual companies routes. The maps were not typically schematic and were simply the line overlaid on a regular city map. There was no integration of the companies services or any co-operation in advertising.
In 1907, The Evening News commissioned a pocket map, The Evening News London Tube Map. It was the first map to show all of the lines with equal weight being given to each line, and it was the first map to use a different colour for each line.
Another early combined map was published in 1908 by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in conjunction with four other underground railway companies that used the Underground brand as part of a common advertising factor.
The map showed eight routes – four operated by the UERL and one from each of the other four companies:
UERL lines:
Bakerloo Railway – brown
Hampstead Railway – indigo
Piccadilly Railway – yellow
District Railway – green
Other lines:
Central London Railway – blue
City and South London Railway – black
Great Northern and City Railway – orange
Metropolitan Railway – red
A geographical map presented restrictions since for sufficient clarity of detail in the crowded central area of the map required the extremities of the District and Metropolitan lines to be omitted and so a full network diagram was not provided. The problem of truncation remained for nearly half a century. Although all of the western branches of the District and Piccadilly lines were included for the first time in 1933 with Harry Becks first proper Tube map, the portion of the Metropolitan line beyond Rickmansworth did not appear until 1938, and the eastern end of the District line did not appear until the mid-1950s.
The route map continued to be developed and was issued in various formats and artistic styles until 1920, when, for the first time, the geographic background detail was omitted in a map designed by MacDonald Gill. That freed the design to enable greater flexibility in the positioning of lines and stations. The routes became more stylised but the arrangement remained, largely, geographic in nature. The 1932 edition was the last geographic map to be published before Becks diagrammatic map was introduced.
The first diagrammatic map of Londons rapid transit network was designed by Harry Beck in 1931. He was a London Underground employee who realised that because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were largely irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get from one station to another; only the topology of the route mattered. That approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams although they were not the inspiration for Becks map. His colleagues pointed out the similarities, however, and he once produced a joke map with the stations replaced by electrical circuit symbols and names, with terminology such as Bakerlite for the Bakerloo line.
To that end, Beck devised a simplified map with stations, straight-line segments connecting them, and the River Thames; and lines running only vertically, horizontally, or on 45° diagonals. To make the map clearer and to emphasise connections, Beck differentiated between ordinary stations, marked with tick marks, and interchange stations, marked with diamonds. London Underground was initially sceptical of his proposal since it was an uncommissioned spare-time project and was tentatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet in 1933. However, it immediately became popular, and the Underground has used topological maps to illustrate the network ever since.
Despite the complexity of making the map, Beck was paid just ten guineas for the artwork and design of the card edition (five guineas for the poster). After its initial success, he continued to design the Tube map until 1960, a single (and unpopular) 1939 edition by Hans Scheger being the only exception. Meanwhile, as well as accommodating new lines and stations, Beck continually altered the design, such as changing the interchange symbol from a diamond to a circle and altering the line colours of the Central line from orange to red and of the Bakerloo line from red to brown. Becks final design, in 1960, bears a strong resemblance to the current map. Beck lived in Finchley, North London, and one of his maps is still preserved on the southbound platform at Finchley Central station, on the Northern line.
In 1997, Becks importance was posthumously recognised, and as of 2021, this statement is printed on every Tube map: This diagram is an evolution of the original design conceived in 1931 by Harry Beck.