File:Wonderground Map of London Town.jpg

English: Published in 1914, By Paying Us Your Pennies – or the Wonderground Map of London Town, as this cartographic icon became known – presents a bird’s eye view of the capital peopled with characters from every walk of life making whimsical quips or puns about road or place names:

• Men hurl hams in Hurlingham
• In Earls Court ‘the Earl’s caught!’
• A colourful serpent has taken up residence in the Serpentine.

Despite its chevrons and heraldic borders, it clearly presents a contemporary portrait of London with its motor cars and B-Type buses and a state-of-the-art monoplane looping the loop in the skies above. Press reports of the time claimed that 'People spend so long looking at this map – they miss their trains yet go on smiling' (Daily Sketch, May 1914).

Various retail editions were published in the following years, while map-makers across the world were inspired to create 'Wonder' maps of their own cities including Melbourne, Mexico City and Barcelona.