Newest Collection of Maps

[BarryC]

Bob,

There seems to be many odd town names that I have never heard of. The more I look, the more I notice.

Guy

Also a lot of town names that Father Beck went looking for that no longer exist, and some we have trouble with now. I did see Calico on at least one of them. I also saw Cumberland on a few of them, and also Gloucester Furnace.
Those Cooks topo maps (#15 and #16) show the lake at Gloucester Furnace and the lake at Weymouth, and also a pond at Speedwell. All of these lakes are gone now, since their dams broke a long time ago.
It's also interesting to see the spelling differences of some towns from one map to another.
#16 also shows the location of Etna Furnace near Head of River.
In fact I saw Farrago Forge on one of them too.
I'm really enjoying them.
My dad was able to open the jpeg maps with his Adobe Acrobat and convert them to PDF's. I tried it with mine and it wouldn't work. I have Acrobat 5.0 like he has. Those maps are the ones I have trouble with.
My computer has a 566 Intel processor, but I don't know which kind. My C drive has a capacity of 14.2 GB, with 11.7 GB free.
My RAM is 127 MB and 65% free, last I looked.
I also have Comcast Highspeed Internet, rather than a conventional modem and dial-up. So downloading from the internet is extremely fast.
Barry

 

[bobpbx]

Is there a difference between forge and furnace?

Guy, here is a post I did on the old Blanda site:

As I explore throughout the pines and look at the slag scattered around the iron making sites, I have to force myself to remember that a furnace and forge were not only different activities, but were often situated far from each other. I did some research to contrast the two:

The product of a furnace was more crude than a forge. The basic function of the furnace was to heat the raw ore to its melting point, and then to pour the resultant mass into molds to cool. There were molds for cannonballs, stove parts, pots, and kettles.

A forge took the product of the furnace, pig iron, and fired it up again to seperate even more impurities out of the iron. The result was a more refined molten mass of iron, capable of being..."pounded by heavy hammers operated by nearby waterpower...this process removed the excess carbon and other impurities, after which the molten mass was worked into bars...The bars (and wrought iron) could then be worked into tools, horseshoes, and wagon wheels. The forge hammers, usually weighing more than 500 pounds apiece, made a great pounding day and night..(Pierce, 14).

Could you imagine walking out of the woods and encountering that? Or, if you are alone out there when one started up, and you had never heard one before, what would you think it was?...BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!, the hammers go as you hear the unceasing pounding. Smoke billowing and drifting through the trees and the increasing shouts of men directing each other to...make the fire hotter!, or...hurry up with the charcoal!, or...put out that damn woods fire! (begun by an errant spark).

I often think Batsto would be much more interesting with a working furnace and forge. I would sign up for that duty in an instant. It was a rough and dirty process, but something truly raw yet beautiful about it; taking ore and making something useful that would last.

Heres a trivia question: What local material was used to make the flux, which would help to seperate the impurities and make them rise to the top of the molten mass?

Source of info: (a great book to read if you find this history interesting).

Pierce, Arthur D., "Iron in the Pines", Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick NJ, 1957.

 

[bach2yoga]

Heres a trivia question: What local material was used to make the flux, which would help to seperate the impurities and make them rise to the top of the molten mass?

Clam shells for both bog iron and glassworks, right?

Here's more trivia:

At Estellville Glass Works, the vegetation differs from the other spring ponds in the area because of the "calcium carbonate, from the limestone used to make glass and from the mortar holding the stones of the Glassworks together, is washed through the sandy soil into the pond. This alters the acidity of the pond area (sweetens it). This raised pH effects the types of plants that grow here. Heal-all (Prunella vulgaris), Jack-in-th-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum), and Ebony spleenwort (Asplenium platyneuron) will grow here. Sphagnum moss, which is common in southern New Jersey wetlands, prefers acidic conditions and isn't present here." (From the Nature Trail Guide fo Atlantic County Park in Estell Manor)

 

[Teegate]

Bob,

In Beck's book he mentions that the hammer was still at Hampton Furnace and it could "never" be removed from the ground. Well, it is long gone or buried either by the state, or a determined vandal. He also mentioned that the mill grinder at Martha would be there forever, and I noticed a house near my mom's has one in their yard.

Thanks for the info. I have Iron in the Pines and will have to read it again. It has been a quarter of a century since I last read it. :roll:

Guy

 

[bobpbx]

Clam shells for both bog iron and glassworks, right?

I can't sneak anything by you Renee!

 

[JeffD]

That collection of state topo maps that you put up just a little while ago, Ben, is fantastic! I am tired and just played around a little and was able, by using that neat index, a particular area (Atision) to peruse. I was reluctant to download the others as it seems technically challenging for the technically challenged, and my suspicions were verified by comments by posters. Maps that can be readily indexed and downloaded via any basic computer and software is much needed. This way people like myself don't get bogged down in the machinery and can better spend time on the message.

It's sort of like having the complete works of Guy. 8)

 

[Ben Ruset]

yeah, i may try to see about converting the other maps to jpg format, but that will most likely make the files a lot larger to download. plus renee was the only person with a problem.

 

[bach2yoga]

yeah, i may try to see about converting the other maps to jpg format, but that will most likely make the files a lot larger to download. plus renee was the only person with a problem.

I think you are right about it being AOL browser--I did download the other plugin you recommended, but every time I try to use it the computer freezes.
I have been able to access the other maps, though.
Thanks, I appreciate the help. 8)
Renee

 

[Ben Ruset]

I am going to convert the files to JPG so that you won't need any special software to read them. This will probably be the best - and easiest - way of make sure everyone can access these maps.

Hopefully I will have all of this done in a few hours.

 

[Ben Ruset]

The conversion is done, but unless you have a fast connection the files will take forever to download. They average around 20mb each.

However, you won't need any special software to view them.

 

[Teegate]

Without high speed it will be a problem. Also, the file still had the .php on the end when finished, which is easily fixed by changing it. Also, when using Netscape on the Mac is informs you that it can't be displayed because of errors. That is a generic message it always says when there is a PC Mac conflict. By holding down the Option key when clicking on the link starts the download. As I mentioned though, the file is named with the .php which caused me some confusion at that point.

Guy

 

[Ben Ruset]

Regarding the file size, there's not a whole lot I can do about that. I'm either damned if I do or damned if I don't. The maps were in .SID format to make them small enough for modem users to download, but people were either afraid to load the viewer or unable to get it working. So at least in JPG it will be readable by everybody. I can't make everybody happy, and right now I am content to leave the files the way that they are. It took me three hours of very tedious typing last night to get those topo maps online, and another hour and a half today to get the maps from SID to TIFF to JPG. I'm taking a break from it for a while!

As for the .php extension, when you click on the link it calls a script that tracks how many times a file has been downloaded. This is useful if you want to go and see what file is the most popular, etc. So the script runs, looks in the database, sees what file you want to download, and serves the file.

The software that runs this site, Postnuke, really wasn't designed to serve JPG images out of it's download area. So that's why when you click on the link it will just display in your browser, and then you save from there, rather than get the file and have the option to download it. I could change that by compressing all of the files into individual ZIP files, but then I would have to re-upload about 60 or so maps, and retype the file name and file size. I will probably do this sometime this weekend.

Sorry to sound bitter, but I am getting a little burnt out from all of this.

 

[Teegate]

Ben,

I was not complaining, just commenting. I was watching as you were posting them and saw how long you were spending on them. We all know you put quite a bit of time into this and I appreciate it. I am sure others do also.

Guy

 

[Ben Ruset]

Guy,

I understand. I've been in a craptastic mood for the last few days. Sorry to be oversensitive.

-ben

 

[BarryC]

I am going to convert the files to JPG so that you won't need any special software to read them. This will probably be the best - and easiest - way of make sure everyone can access these maps.

The conversion is done, but unless you have a fast connection the files will take forever to download. They average around 20mb each.

However, you won't need any special software to view them.

Sorry to say this, but I much preferred the Mr. Sid files and the DJVu files. I love the viewers. My computer has no problem with any of those maps using those viewers. But I did have a big problem with those JPEGs. I could only view 2 or 3 of them . Then after that I had to reboot in order to see more of them, even though I've got them all downloaded. And the 14 mb map I could not view at all. It's downloaded, but won't show on the screen. It just shows up as all white.
Also, as I said previously, my dad was able to view the JPEGs with his Adobe Acrobat 5.0, yet I cannot. I don't know why that is. When he viewed them with his Acrobat it converted them to PDF's which can be viewed similarly to Mr. Sids and DJVu's. If I can be successful with that, I'll be happy.
Thanks for all your work on those ,
Barry

 

[BarryC]

Ben,
I just realized you said the map files that you converted to JPEGs will average about 20 mb each. That means I won't be able to view any of them. I couldn't view that one that's 14 mb. You need extraordinary amounts of RAM to view those huge files. I have a lot, but not nearly as much as you.
Maybe I'm sad over nothing. Later on I'll try to download one of them and see what happens.
Thanks again,
Barry

 

[JeffD]

The NJ topo maps downloaded rather quickly. And I am quite impatient!

The only technical things I could understand was the JPG and the adobe conversion to PDF. I don't understand all the inner workings but the terms ring a bell. I downloaded adobe 5.1 from the Pine Barrens Commission site and it seems to help me in my endevors. I understand that adobe translates computer language, so that files are interchangeable. Much of what you folks are discussing is greek to me though. :?

 

[Ben Ruset]

Yeah, unfortunately the JPG versions do eat up a lot of memory when they load. This is unavoidable, since they are really high resolution images.

The files that were in SID (or DJVU) format came to me that way. Unfortunately I don't have the money to spend on the software to create those SID files. Since most new maps will be coming to me in either TIF or JPG format, it's best if I offer everything as JPG.

I could resize all of the maps to make them smaller, but you'll loose detail and resolution, not to mention that I have 200 maps already, and I don't want to spend the time to do that (remember I don't make any money off of any of this). It's bad enough that I have to ZIP each of these files, which will keep me busy for this weekend coming up.

Memory is really cheap these days. You might want to consider upgrading (you could bump up to 512mb for around $100) which would help you not only with this site, but with your other applications, etc.

 

[Ben Ruset]

Update: I was looking at the larger maps (the Cook topo maps specifically) and found that I can cut the resolution by 50% and still give you a really nice map. The file sizes should drop to around 5MB each which will still require a decent amount of RAM to open and view the image, but far less than what was needed before.

Also, not all of the JPGs are as large. The Rumsey maps for example are all around 1-5MB each. So I'm shooting for maps to be within 1-5MB each, and certainly under 10MB if I can get it that low and still keep the map usable.

Expect the map section to be in a state of flux while I update everything again. But when I am done this should really be usable for everybody and be a handy research tool.

 

[Teegate]

Ben,

You are spending quite a bit of time on these, and you should think about yourself first. Don't get burnt out over all of us. We will still be here whenever you have something to download.

Guy