[Map of Warsaw, Poland] Warsaw (Warszawa)

Original plan of the city of Warsaw, capital of Poland. The city appears surrounded by its old defensive system of walls on the bank of the Vistula or Wisla river. In the lower part there is a comparison of the elevations of the most notable buildings, such as the Military Hospital, the Academy of Sciences, the School of Fine Arts, the Observatory, among many others. This map was published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, founded in 1826 on the initiative of Henry David Thoreau. It was an organisation of the London British Whig party whose aim was to make scientific material accessible to the middle class and the working class, publishing texts of relatively accessible cost. Its principal publishers were Baldwin & Cradock and Charles Knight, the former of which published this old plan. One of the most important collections of the S.D.U.K. was the so-called Library of Useful Knowledge, sold for a sixpence coin and published fortnightly; its books dealt above all with scientific subjects. In the United States a society with the same name was founded around the same date, which fostered reading with speakers of the stature of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It remained active from 1829 to 1947.