For many decades of navigation, anyone that required a map was also using a map measurer. The military use them, sailors use them, motorists use them, town planners and draughtsmen use them, and still, just a few walkers use them. You run a little wheel along a route, a path, a road, a river, a line on a drawing, then either read off the result or measure against a standard.

Waywisers

The first England and Wales road atlas was published in 1675. This seminal work, Britannia, comprised 100 maps and was created by map maker John Ogilby. It was the first to use a scale of one inch to the mile and to use the Statute mile of 1760 yards. Each vertical strip map in the atlas showed compass orientation and distances in miles and furlongs. Such accurate measurements had been made possible by surveyors measuring the roads. A favoured and accurate method was walking the ground with a surveyor’s measuring wheel, otherwise known as a perambulatoror waywiser. Paying homage, both man and instrument were depicted in Ogilby’s Britannia, shown on the frontispiece and on two maps within.

Opisometers

The idea of map measurers is an old one, probably as old as ‘to scale’ maps themselves. Beyond simple calipers, early map measurers, or opisometers were very simple affairs indeed- little wheels on a threaded bar that could be pushed along a line. More expensive designs that incorporated a dial scale didn’t really appear in any great numbers until the later nineteenth century.

Once a scale map has been published, it is then relatively simple for the user to scale up by using a further instrument. At its simplest, another measuring wheel could be used. An opisometer is a wheel on a fine threaded rod. With the wheel wound to one end of the rod, the operator can run the wheel along any line on a map, and, if aware of the scale to which the map is produced, work out by the number of revolutions the distance travelled.

Opisomers were being made by fine instrument makers in the early part of the nineteenth century. Now uncommon, opisometers are still available new today, but seldom applicable to map reading purposes. For a tool with such a long history, it is perhaps a little surprising that they are still required and made today.

Chartometer

Englishman Edward Russell Morris, of the Morris Patents Engineering Works, High Street, Birmingham, began manufacture of his ‘Patent Chartometer’ in the 1870s, the design being patented in 1873. It is a handsome measure and came with a range of interchangeable cards that provided differing scales. There is a link to a closer look at this particular measure below.

The word chartometer was described in Scientific Instruments 1500 – 1900 An Introduction, by Gerard L’Estrange Turner, with Andrew Turner (first published in 1980 as ‘Antique Scientific Instruments‘) thus:

“The opisometer is a small device for measuring the lengths of roads, rivers, walls etc., on maps. It is a milled wheel on a screw thread with a handle. The wheel traces the route, and is then wound backwards on the scale at the edge of the map. The chartometer is the same but has a dial and pointer to give the measure immediately.”

Map measurers can be sweet little pocket watch style affairs that were tucked into the waistcoats of the gentry, or simple little wheeled opisometers, sold in the likes of Stanfords map shop in the mid-twentieth century.

Measures can be made of plastic, Bakelite or metal. They can have handles incorporating plastic, metal, bone or ivory. Cheap versions were given away at petrol stations, or combined into all-singing all-dancing measurer/compass/thermometers made in China by the thousand. That said, they still work. The cheapest will do the same job as the most expensive gold plated measurer ever made, if not necessarily to the same degree of accuracy. They even make incredibly expensive digital versions today. I look on them with dismay, much preferring my little analogue measurers.

A huge array of different measurers have been produced over the past century and more. Some different types are explored below. In recent years however, as digital mapping comes to the fore, they have very much fallen out of fashion.

Not completely though- in 2018 compass maker Silva introduced a map measurement scale on some of their compass lanyards and in 2022 map maker Harvey introduced boot and shoe laces with measuring scales. These flexible and stretch resistant measures are good enough as a rough indicator of distance while on trail.

Three Points of the Compass has taken a closer look at some particular makes and models of map measurers, including the Silva and Harvey measures mentioned above. Links for these are below. Another is added each month as a featured map measure of the month:

• Barker & Son Rotameter
• Bux measure
• Discovery Channel ‘deluxe map measurer with compass’- model D13777
• Elliott Brothers opisometer
• Enbeeco ‘Opisometer’ No.102
• FC precursor to the Universal Map Measure
• Freiberger Präszisionsmechanik/Carl Zeiss Jena Kurvimeter 78
• Hand & Sons “Miledial”
• Harvey map-measure-go! laces
• HB Curvimetre, model 52 Mesures Anglaises
• HB Curvimètre, model 54M
• HC Self-Registering Rotameter, model A90
• HC Universal, with compass and ‘reading glass’
• Hugh Rees “Regent”
• Inco Krzywomierz Turystyczny
• Mile-O-Graph
• Minerva Curvimeter C-01
• Morris’s Patent Chartometer
• Morris’s Patent Wealemefna
• Oldbury Optical Distameter
• Panerai Nautical Curvimeter model PAM00302
• Pathfinder Three-in-One
• Philip & Son Rotameter
• Philips’ Universal Simplex
• Practical Motorist map measurer
• Pif Gadget No. 342- Le Curvimètre
• Radix
• Roller Rule
• Sakurai centimetre curvimeter
• Silva compass scale lanyard
• Société des Lunetiers Curvimeter
• Stanford’s opisometer
• Velos ‘Clicker’, model 1460
• Vistascreen ‘BP Super’
• Vistascreen Pathfinder
• >W&G< Drawing Instruments model WG/5006
• W&HC navigation dividers
• Zlatoust Curvimeter KY-A

So what does Three Points of the Compass use? I have employed a simple little map measure for decades. This is a cheaply made one produced in ‘Western Germany’ and has been pulled down off a bookshelf hundreds of times over the past twenty years when planning routes. It replaced another that gave equally lengthy service that eventually died the death. It sees far less use these days.

This measure never goes on actual hikes with me. Three Points of the Compass is one of a seemingly dying breed who still likes, appreciates and takes hard copy maps on trail. But if I wish to measure a distance on the map while sitting in a tent, pub or hostel lounge, I often simply use a length of thin cordage. This is usually a small hank of 2mm yellow cord. It is one of the two I carry for attaching my Katabatic quilt to my sleeping pad.

Along with thousands of other hikers I rely very much on my online O.S. Maps when planning my routes. This will give me not only distance but also daily elevation. However I still like to use a map measurer on my paper maps when I can while planning. It forces me to look at the terrain, the twists and turns, the type of country being crossed- across bogs, through woods, traversing moorland, traipsing through the backstreets of towns.

While a piece of cord or length of paper will simply measure a length, more complicated measurers can record in many units- multiples or sub-units of inches or feet, centimetres or metres, versts, miles or kilometres. Also to different scales- The two-faced French made measurer below has scales for 1:20 000, 1:25 000, 1:40 000, 1:50 000, 1:75 000, 1:80 000, 1:100 000 and 1:200 000. Made almost a century ago, it is still an effective and useful piece of kit that cost me less than a tenner. Not that I ever use it of course, I still pull down the old favourite from the bookshelf.