Tube map

Harry Beck's 1933 diagram The map every other subway diagram is measured against. Beck, an engineering draftsman from the Underground's signals office, sketched it as a spare-time project in 1931, borrowing the logic of the electrical circuit diagrams he drew at work. Stations hang on straight segments that run only vertically, horizontally or at 45 degrees, trading true geography for a picture of sequence and connections. Management doubted the uncommissioned idea, so it went out as a 500-copy trial in 1932 before the full 1933 printing of 700,000. Riders took to it at once, and its basic grammar has since been adopted by networks around the world. It is the clearest case here of a design that won because it was easier to use.