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Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914

intelligentlifemagazine.com

11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914

#12
An important dimension missing in this type of map is cost of travel. If you are willing to spend sufficient money, my guess would be you could reach pretty much any spot of land on earth within about 48 hours, with the appropriate combination of helicopter and private jet... But if you limit yourself to, say, 2000 Euros, you could probably make it to many places, but it would take significantly longer.

Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914

#14
post #12

An important dimension missing in this type of map is cost of travel. If you are willing to spend sufficient money, my guess would be you could reach pretty much any spot of land on earth within about 48 hours, with the appropriate combination of helicopter and private jet... But if you limit yourself to, say, 2000 Euros, you could probably make it to many places, but it would take significantly longer.

It's a great point for people who want to recreate a modern version of this map, but for 1914 I think "anywhere at any cost" is still an interesting yard-stick.

Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914

#15
post #12

An important dimension missing in this type of map is cost of travel. If you are willing to spend sufficient money, my guess would be you could reach pretty much any spot of land on earth within about 48 hours, with the appropriate combination of helicopter and private jet... But if you limit yourself to, say, 2000 Euros, you could probably make it to many places, but it would take significantly longer.

I think you're missing the fact that this is ~1914. I bet chartering a private jet and/or helicopter back than was... difficult.

Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914

#16
post #13

Does anybody have an idea how I could get a print of this?

Someone posted a link below to this map on the David Rumsey map collection (http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~24...). You can get a high-res version there, or order a print directly.

Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914

#18

The smallest unit listed - within 5 days journey - gives an interesting perspective on the world of travel at that time. What would we choose nowadays for an equivalent unit of "not worth listing anything below this?" Within an hour?

On a world scale, an hour wouldn't get you that far, it would be eaten up by travel to / from airport. For example Charing Cross (often used as a location for the centre of London) is about 30 minutes by train / 40 by car from Heathrow Airport according to Google.

Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914

#19
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect a modern version would have more discontinuities. Areas near airports would be fast to reach, but onward travel from the airports wouldn't be so much faster than 100 years ago. And the oceans would look different - it still takes a long time to reach the mid-atlantic!

So travel time doesn't count using a private jet and a parachute?

Even if it counted it won't be the smallest one with the time it will take to get bail in most countries.

Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914

#20
post #2

It would be fun to see same iso-chronic map for today, 100 years since original. :)

My rough guess is that, if the units were hours, and if concorde still flew, then the map would look much the same?

You don't need the Concorde for that to hold.

London to anywhere in Europe in North America was then clearly the best connected part of the world from London, this is probably still true - today New York is 6-7 hours, San Francisco ~11. Honolulu can be done in just over 20 hours.

Central Africa is obviously immensely better connected today, due to aviation. I'm pretty sure you can get to any airport served by commercial, scheduled air traffic in Africa in India is For South America, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires is 12 and 14 hours respectively and in Australia, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney are all reachable in <24 hours.

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