The practice became so widely known that anti-plagiarists adopted their own terms to verbalize their actions. As recently as 1975, the New Oxford American Dictionary provided a counterfeit description of esquivalience. In 1903, The Music Lover’s Encyclopedia contained a definition for the phony word zzxjoanw. There are examples of fictitious items in encyclopedias as far back as the 1800s. Nevertheless, the practice of creating fake entities in reference materials is not a new tradition. If a violator of copyright produces another map with the same fake street or town, they might be guilty of piracy. It is no wonder that map companies want to protect their work from others, and the practice of maps traps came from this motivation. Producing maps is an extremely demanding process, and it requires painstaking efforts to get all of the details right including correct spellings and locations. Plagiarism, the unlawful copying of another’s work, has long been a problem for mapmakers. Although technology and online crowdsourcing has largely reduced the purpose of trap streets, your maps might still contain a few mistakes here and there.
In the past, though, mapmakers have been known to slip in what are called trap streets, fictional streets inserted on a map which the intention of fighting plagiarism. After all, when humans consult maps, they want to know where an exact location is and how they can get there. UK newspaper The Telegraph pointed out the error to Google, which said it would be corrected.īut a quick Google search shows the town still appears today - even if it is only a bunch of fields.When cartographers create maps, it is usually with the intention of being as accurate as possible. The book was made into a film of the same name and released last year.īut the curious case of Agloe wouldn’t be the first time a map mistake had been noticed.Ī fake English town called Argleton appeared on Google Maps in 2009 creating a stir among people who insisted it wasn’t there. While the store has now closed, it is still there on Google maps.Īgloe also formed the basis for the 2008 best-selling book Paper Towns, which centres on a teenager who searches for a neighbour who goes missing. The story goes that two map makers from the General Drafting Co, Otto G Lindberg and Ernest Alpers, created the town based on the amalgamation of their names, Mother Nature Network reports.īut some time after their map was made, the pair noticed that Agloe appeared on a map by competitor Rand McNally, which argued it got its map markers from Delaware County Records.īut in an odd twist, the town actually became a reality when a general store was built in the area 20 years later. Picture: Google MapsĪgloe came into existence in the 1930s after map makers placed it on a map of Delaware country, New York State. The general store in Agloe did exist, at least for a while. Melway publishing director Murray Godfrey told that while Melway, Sydway and Brisway Street Directories had never included a fictitious road, other map making companies certainly had.
While it might sound odd to go against geography, mistakes are often included as a way of protecting the cartographer’s (or map maker’s) work.īasically, while a map itself can’t technically be subject to copyright, a person’s creative work can.īy including an obvious mistake, cartographers have room to argue their inclusion is creative - and has therefore been copied.Īccording to Australian street directory giant Melway, including mistakes on purpose on road directories takes place for this very reason. In fact, in some cases, fake towns and streets - nicknamed paper towns or trap streets - have been put there on purpose. Well, it turns out it might not actually be anything wrong with your sat nav or even your map reading skills. Perhaps you’ve concluded you’re just really bad at reading maps. EVER wondered why your GPS has led you to a non-existent street or town?