Reading Branch meeting 26th Sept 2019 Speaker: John Leighfield John opened his talk with an anecdote about Einstein and his chauffeur which set the pace and delivery for the evening. He informed the gathering that the earliest maps were around 6000 BC from Turkey, then from 1400 BC Italian wall carving and then 6th century BC from a tablet found in Babylon. Important dates from Britain were 150AD Ptolemy, (1480 print shown) and Matthew Paris 1250. Richard Gough was a notable collector and writer who left a c1360 map to the Bodleian Library which he had purchased in 1774 for half a crown. The big changes came in the 16th century which were brought about by the revolutionary things of printing, military threat (Spanish), the development of surveying as a profession (Henry VIII and Elizabeth I). Christopher Saxton from Leeds in Yorkshire deserves greater recognition. In 1570 he was granted a monopoly by the Elizabethan Court for 10 years on map production. By 1574…