Maxwell Roberts just posted about this on Twitter, and I have to share. A bit of poking around on the Internet found a slightly better image than his, so enjoy!

This is a diagram of the routes of Imperial Airways in 1935 by none other than Henry Charles Beck (yes, that H.C. Beck). I had no idea that he’d created such a diagram up until now, but it clearly bears many of the hallmarks of his work. Cleverly, he’s used different route line treatments to indicate frequency of service –weekly, twice-weekly, daily, etc. – which works well in the context of this two-colour only poster. One could say that southern Africa is a little crowded compared to the rest of the map, but it’s really the only part where there’s any real complexity: much of the rest of the diagram is a single long line of “stops”.

While I don’t know if this map was ever actually officially used by Imperial Airways in this form, it clearly serves as the direct inspiration for the schematic diagram on this poster by Laszlo Maholoy-Nagy from 1936 (September 2015, 4 stars).

Our rating: A lovely piece of airline ephemera and a rarely-seen addition to Beck’s body of work. Wonderful – 5 stars!