Reisz T. Csaba: Magyarország általános térképének elkészítése a 19. század első évtizedében - Lipszky János és segítői térképészeti vállalkozásának ismertetése (Budapest, 2002)
IDEGEN NYELVŰ ÖSSZEFOGLALÓK - The Making of Hungary’s First General Map in the first Decade of the 19th Century. The Cartographic Enterprise of János Lipszky
deal with the map’s inscriptions and content in detail as well as providing an overview of contemporary reviews of the map. Originally, the author intended to publish the Mappa generalis on 5x5, totalling 25 pages. However, Lipszky finally did not dare to start such a large-scale endeavour, and decided on the making of a 16, then eventually a 9-page map. The map portrays historical Hungary in the wider sense, and also includes some parts of neighbouring territories that could still fit on the page. The size of the entire map is 210x160 centimetres. Although the scale is not indicated on the map, domestic literature generally agree that its scale is 1:469,472 based on data available. Earlier research has proved that its exact scale is 1:480,000. 11.3 percent of map pages contain illustrations, 31.6 percent portray foreign territories while 57.1 percent depicts historical Hungary. The introduction of the Repertorium, the index contains a justification by the author: “The present Repertorium was motivated by the small scale that I have used for several reasons in the map of Hungary, Croatia etc. and because of the given small space that did not allow indication of all usual names of presented objects on the map, which are essential knowledge for not only traders, but also all travellers, particularly foreigners in this country.” The fundamental structural principle of the work was a clear definition of all settlements and objects. Therefore Lipszky made an effort to indicate the most characteristic quality of individual items; thus, if a free royal town had an inn, glasswork or heated water, etc., this will not manifested in the repertórium and the overview will not allow the drawing of historical-economic conclusions pertaining to Hungary’s industry. Careful detailing, which is characteristic of the first part of the Repertorium is not found in the material about Transylvania, because, while the former contains 269 types of characteristics, the second part has only 36 different characteristics resulting from the administrative differences in Transylvania (e.g. the administrative units “szék”) and only a fragment of qualities referred to in the Hungarian etc. parts is applied in this part. Hence, the part of the map about Transylvania may only be used for an analysis of settlement name forms and administrative units. The Tabula generalis is a one-page map minimized to one-third of the Mappa generalis, its scale is 1:1,440,000. This map contains borderlines indicating the borders of the nine map units making up the large map, thus the overview map shows which units contains details about specific regions. The map’s later use (Chapter 7) Contemporary journals paid careful attention to Lipszky’s cartographic venture from its start, reported about each important stage in its progress and published a 451
