According to Wikipedia, the Highways Authority ISSUES fictitious road numbers for film and TV use.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_road_numbering...s
Click on the link for the citation.
Really?
|
Wikipedia is far form Gospel - citation as to where this info has come from would be useful.
I do know that the A-Z company put non existent roads on their maps. Does anyone know why they do this?
|
I used to work for a government agency that among other things produced maps. No, not that one. We used to add "features" that weren't really there so we could prove the origin of the map. That was very important. I'm saying no more.
Could the A-Z people be protecting their copyright?
|
Yup, I've seen A to Z admit it on camera. I've done similar with town and city files for work in that somewhere, I've bunged in a small village of way smaller size as a means of tracking the version.
Does sometimes lead to amusement when somebody has pirated your work, and they can't understand how you know.
|
Re the addition of spurious information by the OS, I believe the AA were guilty of a copyright infringement. They copied the spurious information into their own published maps and were subsequently caught out! But I cannot find better detail than link below.
archive.nics.gov.uk/cal/010131n-cal.htm
--
pmh (was peter)
|
|
Adding incorrect information was common in navigation tables in the 19th century, to detect copying. As they were all manually calculated there were also a goodly number of just plain errors. Ships are believed to have foundered because of the incorrect information.
|
For more details on mythycal, unbuilt, ore even pathetic motorways, try this site
pathetic.org.uk/
There is (or was -can't find it right now) an excellent feature on the full scale motorway built for rescue prectice at the Fire Service College in Gloucestershire. ISTR it was called M93, or something like that.
|
For more details on mythycal unbuilt ore even pathetic motorways try this site pathetic.org.uk/
That is a fascinating web site. I found out why the M4 has a junction 8/9, and what happened to the piece of A4(M) which used to be there (even some pictures of the remains).
|
|
|
|
|
Yes, a few years ago there was a short series on bbc2 regarding the history of maps. One programme showed a couple of short roads on the A to Z map of London, but in the real world they did not actually exist. They were added to the map, so that A to Z could see when someone else had copied their mapping.
|
A couple of years back the Ordnance Survey received several millions (>£10m) from a well known motoring organisation that, amongst other things produces maps - it turns out that the MO had copied the same mistakes that had intentionally been put there by OS.
Similarly Information database sellers seed their database with some false names (Staff names & addresses) and this can be used to trace illegal use of the information they sell.
For example a company gets a mailing list to use once for £XXXX. 6 months later, without paying a new fee, they use the same listing - the staff names & addresses are alerted by the new mailing and the database owner asks for a new licence payment.
|
|
Just a few yards from my house, there is a fictional street which appears on just about every mapping site on the web - it's on ViaMichelin (© Michelin, © Tele Atlas, ©Crown Copyright) and also on Multimap (© Getmapping plc) and probably on countless others. I find it most amusing.
|
|
Of course soviet Russia was the real place to study these things. Fictitious roads, cities, industrial output, armed forces, etc. And conversely, apparently blank areas in fact concealing whole cities of secret installations, etc. Part of a long tradition going back through Dead Souls to the original Potemkin villages.
|
|
|
Tyro, if you're feeling mischievous why not write a letter to each of those organisations politely saying you think theuy've made a mistake because the road doesn't exist?
It could be very interesting to see what the various excuses offered are...
|
|
did you know that the people who make the a-z street maps add fictitious streets ( usually a small cul-de-sac) at the edge of one of the pages, this is to prove that it is their material so any one copying their material would obviously be found out!!!!
|
Yes. Mapmakers generally have been doing this for years.
659.
|
|
Or villages that don't exist
|
|
I lived in Norfolk for 35 years. It's full of places that don't exist! :)
|
|
|
Have you got an example of one of these? I've heard this before but thought it was an urban myth.
|
|
False streets are the easiest way to do this, and I've read that it's been successfully used to prove a breach of copyright.
|
|
|
look on any map of london and it will show downing street as a place of great learning ,thats obviously a lie
and i once went out with an urban myths
|
|
|
Have you got an example of one of these? I've heard this before but thought it was an urban myth.
The AA got caught copying maps owned by the Ordnance Survey a few years back and paid about £13m in damages.(IIRC)
Likewise people who sell data - e.g. names and addresses, seed their files with employees/directors names and addresses and can track copying of lists by 3rd parties or multiple mailings when say only 1 mailing was paid for!
|
The AA map one was based on national maps. In this case, insignificant roads had little twists added to them that weren't really there.
V
|
|
That would probably explain the 'sports ground' near St Pauls Road in the Birmingham A-Z.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
