Information technology and history: An unusual map from the archives of the Ministry of Defense of Russia got digitized

Unique object - the map of combat way of 223rd Belgrade, Holding the Order of the Red Banner, Infantry Division, made at the tissue about the size of the canvas 6x3 meters - is converted into electronic format by the efforts of specialists of ELAR Corporation.

On the drawn with colored ink on several stapled sheets map is the combat way of the military unit formed on the Transcaucasia front in October 1941. The division went from the Azerbaijan city of Sumgait through Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Austria to the Czech town of Kaplice, where on May 12, 1945, as a part of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, met with the American troops. On the canvas are the towns and the villages in which happened significant battles of division, near marked places are the brief descriptions and in some case - the images of these battles. The return of the division is rendered on this map as well. The exact date of making the map is unknown, but to all appearance cartographers recreated the way of a military unit immediately after the war, in the wake of the events.

"Although the map is stored in the archives of the Ministry of Defense among other materials of the Great Patriotic War, it is not strictly historical document, but rather a monument to the events of 1941-1945. Location marks of the places and scaling haven’t been done geographically accurate, but rather arbitrary. At the same time, even though the text blocks with results of the battles near respective locations describe the events detailing the facts, these were written on unofficial language, in very human manner, from the point of view of the participants of the events," - explains the head of the Scan Department of ELAR Corporation Sergei Markarov.

Precisely for work with similar to unique map objects of unusual size and rendering specialists of ELAR Corporation have developed and in February 2015 put into operation a completely new set of planetary scanning, capable of high-quality digital images from media of all sizes and textures - both flat and raised.