New maps are always awaited with great anticipation at Stanfords; many become a valuable addition to our stock, and those which fill the few remaining gaps in our coverage are particularly welcomed. Some, it has to be admitted, turn out to be disappointing, and, occasionally, one or two make us wonder why they were published at all and are consigned straight to the wastepaper bin in the buyers' office.
Most old maps disappear from our shops quietly. Many are replaced by new, updated editions with more eye-catching covers. Others are dropped by their publishers because of lack of demand for them in the current very competitive market and are not missed much. One or two seem to disappear just to open new gaps in our stock and make our life more difficult - or at least that's how it seems to us!
But it's not often that a whole map series disappears, and not just any series, but one that, if not quite as old as Stanfords itself, has for decades been among our top best-sellers. Michelin's maps of France at 1:200,000 were among the first products we had to learn to recognize when we joined Stanfords, faced with constant requests from customers for "the yellow maps of France".
Michelin started publishing in 1900, just five years after Edouard and André Michelin drove the world's first car fitted with tyres in a race from Paris to Bordeaux. Their first Guide Michelin, published in a print-run of 35,000 copies, a substantial figure for those days, was offered free to motorists. Hotel guides followed soon, covering various European and North African countries. In 1908 Le Bureau d'Itinéraires Michelin was opened in Paris to develop a forum for exchange of information on choice of routes, road conditions, distances, etc., between the company and motoring enthusiasts. This lead to the publication in the second decade of the last century of Michelin's first map series at 1:200,000, in a handy concertina format specially designed for motorists, and intended to cover France in 47 maps. Following the territorial changes after World War I, a map of Alsace-Lorraine was added, and in 1921 a map of Corsica completed the series.
The success of the French series provided a springboard for expanding Michelin's coverage to other countries. Perhaps some of our older customers still remember Michelin's series of 31 maps covering the British Isles at 1:200,000, published in the 1920s. Switzerland, Belgium and Northern Italy came next, leading over the years to Michelin becoming a major cartographic publisher with an extensive range of maps, all of which can be found on our website.
The "yellow" maps were for years a benchmark for other publishers to follow and an indispensable aid for anyone planning to spend their holidays "motoring in France". It was not until Institut Géographique National, France's equivalent of the Ordnance Survey, decided to expand from providing just topographic coverage of the country to maps aimed at motorist and tourist, with the publication of Série Rouge (now the IGN Regional Series) and Série Verte (now IGN TOP 100), that a serious competitor arrived to challenge Michelin's supremacy.
Spurred by the competition from the IGN, in the mid-1970s Michelin decided to publish a new series of regional road maps at 1:200,000, using the same cartography as the concertina maps, but covering mainland France in only 17 maps (now changed to a new Michelin Regional Series at scales between 1:250,000 and 1:300,000, and no longer retaining that old, classic Michelin style of cartography). For nearly 30 years the two formats were published side by side, until this spring the older concertina series was withdrawn from sale and replaced by new Michelin Local Maps.
We wish the new Local series success, but many of us here are very sad to see the old concertina maps disappear - they played an important part both in the history of cartographic publishing and in the expansion of tourism in France.
Author: Margaret Ross
Date: 1 May 2003
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