Mapsets
Standard vs. Premium, Topographical vs. Geopolitical. What's the deal?
Premium v. Standard Mapsets
Since 2018, the Premium mapset has the best features of our Topographical and Geopolitical maps, showing the contours of the Oceans and Geopolitical spectrum of countries. The great mountain ranges of the sea are shown along side the peaks upon the land.
A Premium mapset will show
- Ocean topography
- A brighter appearance with deeper colors
- Oceanic and human geographic datapoints, like major shipwrecks, coral reefs, nuclear disasters, and spaceports.
- These are the mapsets used in our Geochron Digital 4k.
Topographical v. Geopolitical mapsets?
Until 2015, the Geochron had only been built around a Geopolitical mapset. It’s a map the represents the world by human boundaries, and it’s updated regularly.
The Topographical mapset shows the earth like “view from the sky”. Indeed, the satellite imagery composited into an entire map of the world is stunning. Compared to the human view, this is the Earth of the last 10,000 years, with several dozen large cities shown for reference. The muted contours of the ocean bottom are visible too in this map. (Early prototypes showed ocean bottom in full scale, which we decided was too overwhelming.)
Our premium mapsets combine the contours of the ocean with the topography or geopolitical details of the land, and are several orders of magnitude deeper in color and depth.
Both maps show
- The precise time zone lines
- Major longitudes: the Prime Meridian (Greenwhich)
- Major latitudes: Equator, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn
- Topographical reliefs of the land.
- A Mercator Projection
Premium mapsets vs. Earth Limited Edition
The Earth Limited Edition Geochron (25 of 25) mapset was a photographic quality mapset that actually was developed in a six foot long bathtub in a dark room after printing, and are made occasionally available by Geochron as a very limited reserve because we can’t make any more. But our Premium mapsets are very similar, and even brighter in color and contrast. Both the Premium and Earth Limited Edition mapsets are superior in color and detail to the Standard mapsets.
Standard mapsets were the norm
for 50 years, and were run on huge multi-color offset printers. Geochron began experimenting with newer printing technology in Limited Edition clocks. The results were fantastic, but expensive.
Geochron now offers a premium mapset for all restorations and non-vinyl clocks. The premium mapset comes with an updated world map that combines the ocean topography with the land. Deep blue ocean trenches contrast with the deserts and mountains of our geopolitical map, with greater depth and color than ever before.
Premium Geopolitical, Topographical, and Combo mapsets are available
as an upgrade to all restorations and new clocks with specialty panels (wood, steel, and stainless). Premium mapsets are standard on Boardroom Geochrons and Live Edge. They are not available on vinyl panel clocks.
What is a combo mapset?
Every Geochron ever made actually contains three maps, hand spliced together in a loop six feet long. The map continuously scrolls, at one inch per hour, showing three maps over three days. Every three days, you’ll see the same map come around the loop.
A combo mapset is a combination of our geopolitical and topographical mapsets.
- Day 1: Geopolitical
- Day 2: Topographical
- Day 3: Geopolitical
The picture below is a splice between a standard geopolitical map panel and a standard topographical map panel, making a combination mapset.
