The emergence of the national atlas concept

Summary

This paper will follow the development of the national atlas concept, describing the components that successively were being regarded as belonging in a national atlas. It highlights the role of the IGU Commission on National [and regional] atlases (195676), chaired by Professors Salishchev and Lehmann respectively, and of the Joint IGU-ICA working group on Environmental Atlases 1976-1987 chaired by Prof. Vazquez Maure, followed by Bickmore. To continue its work, in 1987 the International Cartographic Association created its own Commission on National Atlases. The early history of this ICA commission is described by Bengt Rystedt and Ferjan Ormeling in a paper on the ICA Atlas Commission’s website (Ormeling and Rystedt 2018).