The Tube map (sometimes called the London Underground map or diagram) is a schematic transport map of the lines, stations and services of the London Underground, known colloquially as the Tube, hce the map's name. The first schematic Tube map was designed by Harry Beck in 1931.
Since th, it has be expanded to include more of London's public transport systems, including the Docklands Light Railway, London Overground, the Elizabeth line, Tramlink, the London Cable Car and Thameslink.
As a schematic diagram, it shows not the geographic locations but the relative positions of the stations, lines, the stations' connective relations and fare zones. The basic design concepts have be widely adopted for other such maps around the world
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In 2006, the Tube map was voted one of Britain's top 10 design icons which included Concorde, Mini, Supermarine Spitfire, K2 telephone box, World Wide Web and the AEC Routemaster bus.
As London's early transport system was operated by a variety of indepdt companies, there were no complete maps of the network, just for the individual companies' routes. The maps were not typically schematic and were simply the line overlaid on a regular city map. There was no integration of the companies' services or any co-operation in advertising.
In 1907, The Eving News commissioned a pocket map, The Eving News London Tube Map. It was the first map to show all of the lines with equal weight being giv to each line, and it was the first map to use a differt colour for each line.
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Another early combined map was published in 1908 by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in conjunction with four other underground railway companies that used the Underground brand as part of a common advertising factor.
A geographical map prested restrictions since for sufficit clarity of detail in the crowded ctral area of the map required the extremities of the District and Metropolitan lines to be omitted and so a full network diagram was not provided. The problem of truncation remained for nearly half a ctury. Although all of the western branches of the District and Piccadilly lines were included for the first time in 1933 with Harry Beck's first proper Tube map, the portion of the Metropolitan line beyond Rickmansworth did not appear until 1938, and the eastern d of the District line did not appear until the mid-1950s.
The route map continued to be developed and was issued in various formats and artistic styles until 1920, wh, for the first time, the geographic background detail was omitted in a map designed by MacDonald Gill.
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That freed the design to able greater flexibility in the positioning of lines and stations. The routes became more stylised but the arrangemt remained, largely, geographic in nature. The 1932 edition was the last geographic map to be published before Beck's diagrammatic map was introduced.
He was a London Underground employee who realised that because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were largely irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get from one station to another; only the topology of the route mattered. That approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams although they were not the inspiration for Beck's map. His colleagues pointed out the similarities, however, and he once produced a joke map with the stations replaced by electrical circuit symbols and names, with terminology such as Bakerlite for the Bakerloo line.
To that d, Beck devised a simplified map with stations, straight-line segmts connecting them, and the River Thames; and lines running only vertically, horizontally, or on 45° diagonals. To make the map clearer and to emphasise connections, Beck differtiated betwe ordinary stations, marked with tick marks, and interchange stations, marked with diamonds. London Underground was initially sceptical of his proposal since it was an uncommissioned spare-time project and was ttatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet in 1933. However, it immediately became popular, and the Underground has used topological maps to illustrate the network ever since.
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Despite the complexity of making the map, Beck was paid just t guineas for the artwork and design of the card edition (five guineas for the poster).
After its initial success, he continued to design the Tube map until 1960, a single (and unpopular) 1939 edition by Hans Scheger being the only exception.
Meanwhile, as well as accommodating new lines and stations, Beck continually altered the design, such as changing the interchange symbol from a diamond to a circle and altering the line colours of the Ctral line from orange to red and of the Bakerloo line from red to brown. Beck's final design, in 1960, bears a strong resemblance to the currt map. Beck lived in Finchley, North London, and one of his maps is still preserved on the southbound platform at Finchley Ctral station, on the Northern line.
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In 1997, Beck's importance was posthumously recognised, and as of 2022, this statemt is printed on every Tube map: This diagram is an evolution of the original design conceived in 1931 by Harry Beck.
By 1960, Beck had fall out with the Underground's publicity officer, Harold Hutchison, who was not a designer himself but drafted his own version of the Tube map that year. It removed the smoothed corners of Beck's design and created some highly cramped areas (most notably around Liverpool Street station), and the lines were gerally less straight.
However, Hutchison also introduced interchange symbols (circles for Underground-only, squares for connections with British Rail main line services) that were black and allowed multiple lines through them, as opposed to Beck, who used one circle for each line at an interchange, coloured according to the corresponding line.
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In 1964, the design of the map was tak over by Paul Garbutt, who, like Beck, had produced a map in his spare time because of his dislike of the Hutchison design. Garbutt's map restored curves and bds to the diagram but retained Hutchison's black interchange circles, although squares were replaced with circles with a dot inside. Garbutt continued to produce Underground maps for at least another 20 years. Tube maps stopped bearing their designer's name in 1986, wh the elemts of the map th had a very strong resemblance to today's map.
While the standard Tube map avoided represting most mainline services, a new variant of the map issued in 1973, the London's Railways map, was the first to depict Tube and above-ground mainline rail services in a diagrammatic style that closely matched Beck's designs. That version was created by Tim Demuth of the London Transport publicity office and was jointly sponsored by British Rail and London Transport. Demuth's map did not replace the standard Tube map but continued to be published as a supplemtary resource, later known as the London Connections map.
Some alterations have be made to the map over the years. More rect designs have incorporated changes to the network, such as the Docklands Light Railway and the extsion to the Jubilee line. The map has also be expanded to include routes brought under Transport for London control such as TfL Rail and to note the Tube stops that connect with National Rail services, links to airports and River Services. In some cases, stations within short walking distance are now shown, oft with the distance betwe them, such as Fchurch Street's distance from Tower Hill (an evolution of the pedestrian route betwe Bank and Monumt stations, which was once promintly marked on the map). Further, step-free access notations are also incorporated in the currt map.
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In addition, the fare zones have be added to help passgers judge the cost of a journey. Nevertheless, the map remains true to Beck's original scheme, and many other transport systems use schematic maps to represt their services that are likely inspired by Beck. A facsimile of Beck's original design is on display on the southbound platform at his local station, Finchley Ctral.
Despite the large number of versions over the years, the perception of many users is that the currt map is, more or less, Beck's original version from the 1930s, a testamt to the effectivess of his design. Beck drew versions with other formats, 22.5°, rather than 45° (the Paris Métro version uses 22.5° degrees as a base), as well as an unused version for the 1948 Olympic Games
One of the major changes to be made to the revision of the Tube map put out in September 2009 was the removal of the River Thames. The river had be omitted from official maps on several previous occasions (for example, according to David Leboff and Tim Demuth's book, in 1907, 1908 and 1919), and from 1921 it was abst for several years on pocket maps designed by MacDonald Gill. The Thames-free 2009 version was the first time that the river did not appear on the Tube map since the Stringemore pocket map of 1926. The latest removal resulted in widespread international media atttion,
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In more rect years, TfL has expanded its rail services, notably with the expansion of the London Overground network, which has tak over a number of National Rail lines and
