Magazine

The map of the London Underground’s Tube system appears on everything from posters inside the actual stations to countless schlocky souvenirs such as shower curtains and T-shirts.

The iconic image was created not by a cartographer but a part-time electrical engineer, Harry Beck, during his spare time in the Underground’s Signals Office in 1931. With public approval, the London Underground officially adopted the map two years later. It had come to symbolize Londoners’ enthusiasm for efficient and manageable rapid transit. Decades later, advocacy groups and individual transit enthusiasts in the U.S. are following Beck’s lead, taking up the compass and drafting paper to promote changes and rally for expansions to their transit systems.

Diagrammatic in nature, Beck’s design eliminated accurate scale and most geographic markers for the sake of a smaller, portable map size. It visualized the city topologically, and was one of the first subway maps to standardize diagonals at 45 degrees.