Background:
As Londons early transport system was operated by a variety of independent companies, there were no complete maps of the network, just for the individual companies routes. The maps were not typically schematic and were simply the line overlaid on a regular city map. There was no integration of the companies services or any co-operation in advertising.
In 1907, The Evening News commissioned a pocket map, The Evening News London Tube Map. It was the first map to show all of the lines with equal weight being given to each line, and it was the first map to use a different colour for each line.
Another early combined map was published in 1908 by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in conjunction with four other underground railway companies that used the Underground brand as part of a common advertising factor.
The map showed eight routes – four operated by the UERL and one from each of the other four companies:
UERL lines:
Bakerloo Railway – brown
Hampstead Railway – indigo
Piccadilly Railway – yellow
District Railway – green
Other lines:
Central London Railway – blue
City and South London Railway – black
Great Northern and City Railway – orange
Metropolitan Railway – red
A geographical map presented restrictions since for sufficient clarity of detail in the crowded central area of the map required the extremities of the District and Metropolitan lines to be omitted and so a full network diagram was not provided. The problem of truncation remained for nearly half a century. Although all of the western branches of the District and Piccadilly lines were included for the first time in 1933 with Harry Becks first proper Tube map, the portion of the Metropolitan line beyond Rickmansworth did not appear until 1938, and the eastern end of the District line did not appear until the mid-1950s.
The route map continued to be developed and was issued in various formats and artistic styles until 1920, when, for the first time, the geographic background detail was omitted in a map designed by MacDonald Gill. That freed the design to enable greater flexibility in the positioning of lines and stations. The routes became more stylised but the arrangement remained, largely, geographic in nature. The 1932 edition was the last geographic map to be published before Becks diagrammatic map was introduced.
The first diagrammatic map of Londons rapid transit network was designed by Harry Beck in 1931. He was a London Underground employee who realised that because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were largely irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get from one station to another; only the topology of the route mattered. That approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams although they were not the inspiration for Becks map. His colleagues pointed out the similarities, however, and he once produced a joke map with the stations replaced by electrical circuit symbols and names, with terminology such as Bakerlite for the Bakerloo line.
To that end, Beck devised a simplified map with stations, straight-line segments connecting them, and the River Thames; and lines running only vertically, horizontally, or on 45° diagonals. To make the map clearer and to emphasise connections, Beck differentiated between ordinary stations, marked with tick marks, and interchange stations, marked with diamonds. London Underground was initially sceptical of his proposal since it was an uncommissioned spare-time project and was tentatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet in 1933. However, it immediately became popular, and the Underground has used topological maps to illustrate the network ever since.
Despite the complexity of making the map, Beck was paid just ten guineas for the artwork and design of the card edition (five guineas for the poster). After its initial success, he continued to design the Tube map until 1960, a single (and unpopular) 1939 edition by Hans Scheger being the only exception. Meanwhile, as well as accommodating new lines and stations, Beck continually altered the design, such as changing the interchange symbol from a diamond to a circle and altering the line colours of the Central line from orange to red and of the Bakerloo line from red to brown. Becks final design, in 1960, bears a strong resemblance to the current map. Beck lived in Finchley, North London, and one of his maps is still preserved on the southbound platform at Finchley Central station, on the Northern line.
In 1997, Becks importance was posthumously recognised, and as of 2021, this statement is printed on every Tube map: This diagram is an evolution of the original design conceived in 1931 by Harry Beck.

Philip, George 1800 - 1882
George Philip was a cartographer and map publisher. He had one son, also George (1823 - 1902), who was admitted to the business in 1848. The eventual company, George Philip & Son Ltd, continued to operate successfully until in 1987 when it was sold to Reed International .
George senior was born in Huntly, Aberdeenshire to a staunchly Calvinist family. In 1819 he became assistant to the Liverpool bookseller, William Grapel and in 1834 started his own business in Liverpool producing maps and educational books.
The business expanded rapidly. He used cartographers (such as John Bartholomew the elder, August Petermann, and William Hughes) to produce maps on copper plates. Philip then had these printed and hand-coloured by his women tinters. By the time he produced his county maps of 1862 he was using machine coloured maps produced on power-driven lithographic presses.
The firm also supplied atlases and textbooks overseas starting with an atlas for Australian schools in 1865 and for New Zealand in 1869. The demand from board schools, established after 1870, enabled further expansion in the market for general textbooks, school stationery, atlases and wall maps