Before 1990 practically the only map publisher of the country was the state-owned Cartographia Company founded in 1954.
The scope of activities of the firm, which was originally set up with the purpose of producing maps for schools, had gradually been completed by surveying. At the time of the transition year of 1990 it was also producing large-scale maps (cadastral maps, utility maps) as well as topographic maps (from surveying to printing). Besides these surveying maps the company was supplying primary and secondary education and the general public with various maps and atlases.
Following the transition from command to market economy the Ministry of Agriculture, representing the proprietor, has formulated the objective of privatizing the company. However this big firm of about 1,000 staff, similar in its activities to the geographical institutes of several western European countries (eg. IGN of France and Spain, Ordnance Survey of Great Britain), but no longer obtaining any government contracts, was unfit for sale.
The company had to get rid of its surveying units and be transformed into a smaller map publisher. The state enterprise, with a staff of 130 and with its own printing facilities, was transformed into a limited liability company named Cartographia Ltd. on 1 January 1993. It is presently the largest cartographic publisher in the Hungarian map market. Its privatization has however, not been completed, due to changing government privatization strategies and to changing legislation in the subject.
Besides the earlier traditional manual techniques since 1993 Cartographia has increasingly turned to computerization. Map production in this respect is primarily done on PC equipment with AutoCad softwares, as well as their graphic programmes (Freehand, Corel) are also used.
Until 1996 the firm had sold his maps through some distribution companies. In 1996 Cartographia Ltd. set up his wholesale warehouse. From this year it has been working with three own territorial map agents.
The company continues to publish school maps: three types of geographical and three historical atlases are available at present. In 1998 a new atlas of history and in 1999 a new atlas of geography for secondary schools were published. The company has a geographical as well as a historical wall map series for schools.
A total of 1,5 million copies of road, tourist or city maps and atlases are published each year for the general public.
Recently the manual and digital cartography live together in the company. Our main products, maps of Budapest, and Hungary were made by computer. These maps and atlases can be used for GPS navigation.
Making multimedia products was a significant step in the life of our company. The first CD atlas was the Budapest Atlas in 1996. In 1997 the Hungary CD Atlas, in 1998 the Hungarian towns CD Atlas were published. This year we will transform our World Atlas into a CD Atlas form.
Last year we developed a new type of product for walking tourists.
Walkers use regularly a tourist map, a guide book about the built environment and a book about the proposed, recommended footpaths. We combined these three products and published them together. The new tourist (walking) atlases have had a great success.
The company did not do business with guidebooks until 1992. Since then it has adopted and translated for use in Hungary 39 volumes of the Automobile Association of the United Kingdom and began to publish its own Hungarian guidebook series too.
In the last four year period some school atlases also won prizes on the Hungarodidact Exhibitions.
Some other maps won awards at the Competition "Lovely Hungarian Maps".
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