This story appears in the July 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine ... Desceliers produced the illustrated, annotated map, full of geographic features both real and imagined.

Gilbert H. Grosvenor, National Geographic magazine’s founding editor, is credited with saying: A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.

Once this photolettering process was refined, it was applied to our United States map supplement in the May 1933 National Geographic. Shortly thereafter, Society cartographer Charles E.

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