Five Guineas — Why isn't the London Tube map to scale, and who designed it?

The London Tube map is not to scale because it is not a map of London — it is a diagram of which line goes where and where you change trains, made by throwing away the streets, the true shapes and the real distances and keeping only one true thing: the river. In 1931 an out-of-work draughtsman called Harry Beck drew it at his kitchen table, the Underground turned it down, and a year later it sold out in a month. Strip the honest 1931 map down yourself, one true thing at a time, until it snaps into the map that is now on the wall of every metro station on Earth - then draw one of your own street.