The first motorways on maps
Draughtsman Willie Hall describes how Bartholomew kept their half inch to the mile series of maps up-to-date.
Transcription
'You remember the famous half-inch series where 62 sheets covered the whole of Great Britain? Well, at one time I was in charge of the British Isles section, of updating them.
'It was a continual job of updating those 62 sheets. They were updated every three years. Each one.
'I remember putting the very first motorway on to the half-inch series — the first motorway.
'And then we had to decide what kind of symbol that was going to be, and I think we were the first people then that introduced the blue colouring to motorways. Because all our roads used to be first class roads were red, second class roads were yellow and a third class it was probably a green.
'When it came to motorways we had to sort of wonder: "Where do we go with this?"'
