The Isochronic map
Stories from Physics
for 11-14
14-16
In 1883, Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, developed an ‘Isochronic Passage Chart for Travellers’ which indicated, by coloured shading, the time it would take a traveller starting in London to travel to different parts of the world. To reach the farthest areas of the map, including parts of Australia and New Zealand, would have taken 40 days of travel. Recently, a travel company produced an updated version of the map for journeys in 2016. The maximum travel time on the modern map is just a little over one and a half days.
References
H. Wainer, Picturing the Uncertain World: How to Understand, Communicate, and Control Uncertainty through Graphical Display, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 165-166.
K. Phelan, Time Flies? According To These Maps It Does, 8th January 2016
Rome2rio.com blog