{"id":1806660,"date":"2022-04-12T19:54:16","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T23:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1806660"},"modified":"2022-04-12T19:54:16","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T23:54:16","slug":"clock-and-compass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2022\/04\/clock-and-compass\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Clock and Compass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Monmonier<\/a>\u2019s latest book, Clock and Compass: How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u2014out today from the University of Iowa Press<\/a>\u2014is a spinoff of sorts. This relatively slim volume does a deep dive on one of the inventions featured in his previous book, Patents and Cartographic<\/em> Inventions<\/em><\/a>: the clock system invented and promoted by John Byron Plato (1867-1966).<\/p>\n

\"BookThe clock system was an attempt to solve a specific problem: well into the 20th century, farmhouses in the United States lacked proper addresses. Without a street number or even a street name, navigating to a given farmhouse could be a real challenge. Plato\u2019s solution, invented while he was trying his hand at farming in Colorado, was to assign each farmhouse an identifier based on its clock position, with the clock centred on the nearest town. The clock system saw its greatest uptake in upstate New York, where Plato relocated shortly thereafter and started his business selling the maps and directories based on his system. In a marketing turn worthy of Phyllis Pearsall<\/a>, Plato cultivated his previous status as a farmer, citing as his inspiration a sale lost because his buyer couldn\u2019t find his house.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to think of the clock system as the what3words of a century ago: a proprietary navigational aid promising to make wayfinding simpler. And apart from the considerable curiousity value of an obsolete but unusual (and therefore interesting) system, the story of Plato and his system is pure American hustle: the rise and fall of a business from patent to product to collapse in the face of the Great Depression, to an unsuccessful attempt at restarting in Ohio. The indefatigable Plato even persisted with his system while working for the federal government in various capacities during the 1930s. Meanwhile, after Plato\u2019s patent had expired, a modified compass system\u2014using compass points rather than hours on a clock face\u2014persisted in upstate New York until 1940.<\/p>\n

Apart from his system, and the maps and ephemera it produced, Plato left few traces in the historical record, which makes him a challenging subject for a biographer. Monmonier gamely reconstructs what he can from patent filings, tax rolls, employment records and news coverage. Lacking more verbose evidence, Monmonier even resorts to producing maps of Plato\u2019s life from those records, which seems appropriate given the subject matter and even helps illuminate several points. The end result is necessarily fragmentary and inductive, but a portrait of Plato nevertheless manages to emerge: a restless man who after dabbling in many things, changing gears and relocating many times, hit upon an idea that was kind of neat and tried to ride it for all it was worth.<\/p>\n

I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher.<\/p>\n

\n

\"BookClock and Compass: How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
\nby Mark Monmonier
\nUniversity of Iowa Press<\/a>, 12 Apr 2022
\nAmazon<\/a> (Canada<\/a>, UK<\/a>) | Apple Books<\/a> | Bookshop<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Monmonier\u2019s latest book, Clock and Compass: How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address\u2014out today from the University of Iowa Press\u2014is a spinoff of sorts. This relatively slim volume does a deep dive… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,752],"tags":[30,1576,201],"class_list":["post-1806660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-navigation","tag-books","tag-clock-system","tag-monmonier"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4727,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/08\/more-on-patents-and-cartographic-inventions\/","url_meta":{"origin":1806660,"position":0},"title":"More on Patents and Cartographic Inventions","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"30 August 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"Earlier this year I mentioned the publication of Mark Monmonier's latest book,\u00a0Patents and Cartographic Inventions. This week at All Over the Map, Betsy Mason does a bit more than mention the book, with a closer look at some of the more unusual patents from Monmonier's book: an early voice navigation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/tag\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/patents-cartographic-inventions-101x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4352,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/04\/patents-and-cartographic-inventions\/","url_meta":{"origin":1806660,"position":1},"title":"Patents and Cartographic Inventions","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"25 April 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"Published late last month, Mark Monmonier's new book, Patents and Cartographic Inventions: A New Perspective for Map History (Palgrave Macmillan) is on a somewhat more arcane and non-obvious subject than his usual fare. It's an exploration of the U.S. patent system that focuses on map- and navigation-related inventions. The publisher's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/tag\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/patents-cartographic-inventions-202x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1483,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/04\/mccutcheons-1908-cartoon\/","url_meta":{"origin":1806660,"position":2},"title":"McCutcheon’s 1908 Cartoon","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"10 April 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"New York Times graphics editor Tim Wallace stumbled across a 1908\u00a0Chicago Tribune cartoon by John T. McCutcheon that's older than other examples of \"perception-based\" maps he was aware of. https:\/\/twitter.com\/wallacetim\/status\/710092960512266240 (Though my previous entry contained a link to a 1922 McCutcheon cartoon, which only moves the clock back only 14\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Unusual Maps"","block_context":{"text":"Unusual Maps","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/unusual-maps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5394,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2012\/09\/apple-google-map-kremlinology\/","url_meta":{"origin":1806660,"position":3},"title":"Apple-Google Maps Kremlinology","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"28 September 2012","format":"link","excerpt":"Details continue to emerge, as details tend to do, about how and why Apple replaced Google with its own maps in iOS 6. John Paczkowski reports that the Apple-Google maps arrangement faltered over voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, which Google Maps has had on Android for years but Apple couldn't get from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","block_context":{"text":"Mobile","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/mobile\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5579,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2013\/05\/review-the-art-of-the-map\/","url_meta":{"origin":1806660,"position":4},"title":"Review: The Art of the Map","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"28 May 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In The Art of the Map: An Illustrated History of Map Elements and Embellishments, retired history professor Dennis Reinhartz explores the design elements at the margins of western maps from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It is both a lavishly illustrated book and a close interrogation of the design\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Antique Maps"","block_context":{"text":"Antique Maps","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/antique-maps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/art-of-the-map-275x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1831740,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2024\/06\/the-geochron-and-how-one-was-restored\/","url_meta":{"origin":1806660,"position":5},"title":"The Geochron, and How One Was Restored","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"6 June 2024","format":"link","excerpt":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=z2EUPDSabY0 The Geochron has been around since the mid-sixties and I only just learned about it this week. It\u2019s an analog, electromechanical world clock and map. The backlit, translucent map is motorized: it scrolls from left to right to indicate the rotation of the earth. Noon is at the centre\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Unusual Maps"","block_context":{"text":"Unusual Maps","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/unusual-maps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/z2EUPDSabY0\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806660"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1806796,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806660\/revisions\/1806796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}