General Drafting Corporation of

Convent Station, New Jersey Convent Station is an Local government in New Jersey#Unincorporated communities, unincorporated community located within Morris Township, New Jersey, Morris Township, in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. located east of Morristown, New Jer ...

, founded by Otto G. Lindberg in 1909, was one of the "Big Three"

road map A road map, route map, or street map is a map that primarily displays roads and transport links rather than natural geographical information. It is a type of navigational map that commonly includes political boundaries and labels, making i ...

publishers in the United States from 1930 to 1970, along with H.M. Gousha and

Rand McNally Rand McNally is an American technology and publishing company that provides mapping, software and hardware for consumer electronics, commercial transportation and education markets. The company is headquartered in Chicago, with a distribution ...

.General Drafting Co., Inc. company brochure, 1982. Unlike the other two, General Drafting did not sell its maps to a variety of smaller customers, but was the exclusive publisher of maps for Standard Oil of New Jersey, later

Esso Esso () is a trade name, trading name for ExxonMobil. Originally, the name was primarily used by its predecessor Exxon, Standard Oil of New Jersey after the breakup of the original Standard Oil company in 1911. The company adopted the name "Ess ...

and

Exxon ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November ...

. They also published maps for Standard Oil Company of Kentucky a.k.a. KYSO. KYSO later merged with Standard Oil Company of California better known as Chevron and SOCAL primarily used The H.M. Gousha company for their roadmaps. Lindberg was a young immigrant from Finland and, with a borrowed drafting board and a $500.00 loan from his father, the then 23-yr. old started the business of "any and all general draughting" at 170 Broadway in NYC in 1909. As the firm started to prosper, the company secured its first contract from the American Automobile Association for "road maps," a harbinger of the future for the small company in 1911. In 1914, Lindberg incorporated and became the first chairman of the board, a position he would hold until his death in 1968. In 1923, Lindberg persuaded Standard Oil of New Jersey to let him draw the "best" road map of the state that they had ever seen, for free distribution. Standard was sufficiently impressed with the product to contract with General Drafting to make all their road maps—a relationship that lasted for another six decades. The company's cartography was generally regarded as "an outstandingly attractive road map design, unexcelled in the U.S."Snyder, John P. ''The Mapping of New Jersey.'' Rutgers University Press, 1973, pp. 144-147. The company also created exquisite maps for some special publications such as "These United States - Our Nation's Geography, History and People", published by

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his w ...

in 1968. When oil companies stopped providing free maps, General Drafting tried to expand into retail map production, and continued to make maps for Exxon to sell; but its fortunes declined, and in 1992 it was purchased by

Langenscheidt Langenscheidt () is a German publishing company that specializes in language reference works. In addition to publishing monolingual dictionaries, Langenscheidt also publishes bilingual dictionaries and travel phrase-books. Langenscheidt has lan ...

and absorbed into the American Map Company; its state maps became the "Travelvision" lineup for that company.

References

Map companies of the United States Companies based in Morris County, New Jersey {{Publishing-stub