What does Gordon Cheers of Matcham, Elvis Presley and The Beatles have in common?
They share a page in the 70th anniversary edition of the Guinness Book of Records, released on September 12 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Cheers was recognised for publishing the world’s largest atlas, Earth Platinum, which is taller than him at 6ft high (1.854m) and wider than 4ft (1.45m) closed.
It will be still standing in the world’s most important libraries long after the music of Presley and The Beatles has been forgotten.
Cheers published the world atlas more than a decade ago, a labor of love that cost more than $1M and his work has been recognised by the Book of Records.
Only 31 copies of the atlas were printed and one can be found at the NSW State Library.
The British Library has a copy, an important addition to the slightly smaller Klencke Atlas that was published in 1660 and previously the world’s largest book of maps until Cheers got to work.
Head of Maps at the British Library Peter Barber is quoted as saying Earth Platinum will be an astonishing resource for researchers in 10, 20 or 200 years’ time.
Earth Platinum was the work of 120 people, including international cartographers, geographers and photographers, and includes technology first developed by NASA for high resolution photography.
Gigapan formed in 2008 as a commercial spin-off of the NASA technology and the high-pixel photos offer extraordinary detail tiled together to create an overall image.
One of these overall images of 12,000 photos took three months to download and tile together to create a one-page-sized image.
The 128-page atlas weighs about 200kg and was printed on 280gsm paper stock – that’s the quality of a business card, while a newspaper page is about 80gsm.
The book was printed in Milan and bound in Hong Kong and may be the last of its type: the printer and binder have since gone out of business.
Cheers, who lives at Matcham, has been a book publisher for more than three decades; he owns Millenium Press and previously worked for Penguin Random House.
“Imagine if you could do something, and you decided not to do it, after 30-odd years in publishing,” Cheers said.
“No-one else would do it.
“I am pleased that a book I have published will still be accessible to other generations for centuries to come.”
Interested in buying one of the few copies left for sale?
It will cost only $100,000 – but that’s in American dollars.
Cheers offers free delivery for locals. Maybe double the fine print on that.
Merilyn Vale