Map of Sweden and Norway.

Rand McNally & Company. Indexed Atlas of the World.

The name Rand McNally is today synonymous with maps, and Rand McNally & Company is one of the foremost cartographic publishing houses in the world. Although the company achieved its greatest success and growth in the twentieth century, its foundations were firmly laid prior to 1900. In the 1850's Rand McNally & Company began to print tickets for the railroads. This entrée into the rapidly expanding railroad industry was to have a great influence on the company.

In the 1870s the firm published the Rand McNally & Company's Railway Guide. The company's map business came of age in 1876 with publication of Rand McNally & Co.'s New Railroad and Country Map of the United States and Canada, Compiled from the Latest Government Surveys, and Drawn to an Accurate Scale. After this publishing endeavor they published their first atlas, the Business Atlas of the Great Mississippi Valley and Pacific Slope, in the same year. One of the reasons that Rand McNally was so successful was their method of engraving. They utilized a process known as wax engraving. In brief, wax engraving was a simple and ingenious process by which a metal printing plate in relief could be produced from an engraved mold. This process allowed Rand McNally to accelerate and facilitate correction work. The introduction of this single technique was responsible for the Company's instantaneous success in mapmaking.

In the interest of broadening their scope, Rand McNally published the Indexed Atlas of the World in the early 1880s. The state and territory maps in this atlas resemble those in the Business Atlas, and like the Business Atlas maps were based on the company's New Railroad and County Map of the United States and Canada. The maps of foreign countries, however, appear to have been newly compiled, drafted, and engraved for the Indexed Atlas of the World. With the map o343f each country there is a descriptive article on its geography, economics, and social conditions. The introduction of the atlas places great emphasis on the indexing system employed in it and stresses "the great use which has been made of colored diagrams."

The Indexed Atlas of the World was popular, and a number of one-volume editions were published to 1892. Later editions were expanded to include as many as 904 pages. From 1894-1908, the atlas was published in two- and four-volume editions, in enlarged folio formats. To distribute the Indexed Atlas of the World and other publications, Rand McNally established, in 1886, the Continental Publishing Company. The imprint of this firm appears on some Rand McNally atlases and maps until 1904.