Generated from the same geometry the printer is handed — the plate seen from directly above. It cannot show the relief, which is the part you have to hold.
The United States
The lower forty-eight, and two pieces you would not expect
No map makes the surveyor's ruler as obvious as this one. East of the Mississippi the borders wander because they were negotiated along rivers and ridges; west of it they are drawn with a straightedge across country nobody had walked yet. Holding both halves makes the history legible. The relief carries the rest of the argument: the Rockies, the Great Basin, the Appalachians and the utterly flat Great Plains between them. Two pieces surprise people: the District of Columbia is here, small but liftable, and Maryland arrives as two, because the Chesapeake cuts it in half and the eastern shore is genuinely a separate piece of land. Alaska and Hawaii are not on this plate — the extent is the contiguous states, and at this scale nothing else would fit beside them honestly.
What a child works out
- Straight borders and wiggly borders were made in different centuries, for different reasons.
- A bay can divide a state as firmly as a law does — find Maryland's two halves.
- The Rockies and the Appalachians are not the same kind of mountain — you can feel it.
- Rivers were the first borders because they were the first roads.
The plate
- Pieces
- 50 pieces
- Plate
- 250 × 176 mm
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 20.1 km
- Vertical exaggeration
- × 18.34
- Thickness
- 8.8 mm
- Smallest piece
- 7 mm²
- Fit
- 0.3 mm clearance
- Material
- PLA, printed in Switzerland
B5 — the size of a school exercise book.
How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.
Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.
Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.
Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.
Every named piece
- Alabama
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Maryland 2
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Zoom in, zoom out
A piece of each of these is the subject of the next one. Each plate is redrawn at its own scale, so it is a real map at every level rather than an enlargement of the one above.
Follow the borders — World to continent to country to state to township
More from Countries & States
See all →
Europe
Forty-five countries at real elevation
The political map, printed on the terrain it was drawn over. Forty-five pieces, from Andorra to Russia's western edge.
- Pieces
- 45 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 24.7 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00
North America
Nineteen countries, Panama to the Arctic
The continent as countries — including the Caribbean islands that are usually too small to cut.
- Pieces
- 19 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 49.3 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00
Switzerland
Twenty-three cantons over the Alps
The cantons, printed at 1 mm to 1.5 km, with the Alps in white and every major lake in blue.
- Pieces
- 23 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 1.5 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00