ABSTRACT
In educating cartographers, the emphasis has always been placed on the practical dimension, which was directly linked to the technology of map design and map publishing. The beginning of professional cartography and of the profession of cartographer dates back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when over a span of a hundred years almost all of the world’s map production was held in a single country by four publishing houses (Ortelius, De Jode, Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius, and Blaeu). A distinctive feature of their activity was specialization of the employees according to the successive stages of copperplate map design. The author (geographer, scientist) prepared the manuscript of cartographic content; then, the drawer produced the original sketch of the map on a sheet of paper using a quill; the sketch was subsequently transferred to a copper plate by the engraver; and finally, after printing, the colourist applied paint onto the sheet (Medynska-Gulij, 2013). One of the most famous cartographers of this period was Gerard Mercator (1512–1594), who was exceptional in that he combined all the aforementioned professions (Koeman et al., 2007). The following centuries saw the introduction of new technologies of map creation, which further separated the successive scientific and conceptual activities from the technical jobs at the latter stages of production. It was, however, not until the advent of digital technology that a single person was enabled to create complete maps from scratch, i.e. from a raw concept to the final product. This newly appeared, exceptional position of the map maker works independently to create maps with the help of digital resources that have reduced the whole cartographic workshop to a single computer workstation.
