Here’s a little video primer about H.C. Beck’s famous Tube map, put together by the London Transport Museum’s Acton Depot. It’s a breezy little introduction to the most famous and influential transit diagram in the world, but it unfortunately repeats and perpetuates a couple of misconceptions about the map and Beck himself. (I’d expect a little better from the London Transport Museum!)
At first, I even thought the initial statement that Beck was “out of work” when he devised the map was false, but some further research revealed that he had been let go from his temporary position as an engineering draftsman at the Underground Group when he drew his initial working sketch in 1931. He was reemployed in a similar position in 1932, so was fully working for the Underground when the map was actually published in January 1933. His position, however, remained a temporary one until 1937.
It should be noted that all of Beck’s work on the map was done on a freelance basis outside of his normal duties, and he was paid separate contracting fees for such work. He was under the impression that in return for assigning copyright for the map to the Underground Group, he was assured of being the only person who could make edits to the map. Alas, he never got this in writing, which led to an acrimonious split in 1960 when the Hutchinson map was released without Beck’s knowledge.
The assertion in the video that Beck was employed as the Underground’s “chief cartographer” upon his return is utter nonsense. He was only ever a lowly draftsman (doing the map work in his own time on the side), and actually left London Transport in 1947 to take on a teaching position at the London School of Printing and the Graphic Arts. Here he taught classes in typographical design, colour theory, the history of type design, lettering and drawing. He continued his work on the Tube Map on a freelance basis.
In a memoir, Bryce Beaumont (later the Publicity Director at London Transport) describes Beck’s duties in 1936 thusly:
Beck’s job in those days was the adaption of Press Advertising layouts… and overseeing the correspondence to newspapers and periodicals for the booking and filling of advertising space.
Ken Garland describes Beck’s work at London Transport as holding “no great prospect of advancement, congenial though it was.”
Finally, the often-repeated “fact” that Beck based his work off electrical diagrams. There is absolutely no conclusive proof that this is true: Beck himself never mentioned an electrical diagram as inspiration, instead focussing on his desire to simplify and clarify the network. It’s just as likely that he was influenced by the seminal diagrammatic map work of George Dow for the LNER. The misconception seems to have taken root because of this joke diagram that Beck drew in 1933 after his co-workers teased him about the perceived similarities between his work and an electrical diagram.
