At the age of 63, I still spend much of my spare time traveling around the world. I always stay in Lausanne, Switzerland. Lake Geneva is usually my starting place for my hiking and cycling adventure. Having that I traveled around the globe on either University time, or just slogging it out on old tramp ships to see the rest of the world. My wife always thought I was crazy, because most of my escapades were performed on the spur of the moment. My climbing expeditions in the Swiss alps or any of my ventures, sometimes with very little money. I am now more or less retired, but I do teach occasionally and call the United States my adopted home.

Being an old professor of Earth Sciences, I am what you might call a zealot for old maps. My grandfather started the collection and I have added to it over the years. I have so many early maps ranging from the 16th century of many maps rare and unique value. I decided to start a small family business, of selling prints of the original items. As of today many of the maps have never been listed, which the family is doing now. Unlike most publishers of old maps, we actually clean the digital reproduction before we sell them. It always seemed to me, that old maps were of very little interest to most people in the street.

But this assumption proved to be very wrong. You usually associate Historical documents, with dusty museums cabinets--never to see the light of day. Except for an avid student of cartographic material it ever emerges into the light of day. I am amazed that regular people buy our maps to frame and place in their homes. one of biggest interest groups are family genealogist's, who use our county land ownership maps to trace the movement of their ancestors. We have been in business for about five years and now many of our archival replicas are ordered from overseas. My grandmother spends a lot of time filling in custom declarations, for orders from Japan to Australia. Maps of the Past, Inc, is growing in leaps and bounds, which means that preservingevery map we scan is a high priority.

Professor, you've made the apostrophe error

by the way, is this an advertisement?

Are you a hard rock or soft rock geo?