History of swisstopo

Created in 1838, the “Topographic Office” published the sheets of the “Topographic Map of Switzerland” (Dufour Map) between 1845 and 1865. This was pioneering work on the part of the official Swiss Federal Cartography Office and a feat of surveying.

The political, economic and military spheres of the thriving Federal State needed increasingly precise maps in order to keep up-to-date with the spatial factors of the Confederation. The “Swiss Topographical Atlas” (Siegfried Maps) answered this need. Its total of 604 sheets were published between 1870 and 1926 to a scale of 1:25 000/1:50 000.

The Swiss National Maps were published from 1938 onwards, a new map collection. This modernised and standardised the representation of Switzerland in map images. But the processes on which the national maps were based were also changing significantly: photogrammetric surveying methods and negative scribing on glass revolutionised work processes between 1926 and 1958.

Electronic calculators took over at the Swiss Federal Office of Topography during the last third of the 20th century. However, they did not become an important working tool with any speed: at first, they were only used for geodetic calculations. By the 1990s, computer-aided processes had gained a foothold in all areas of work.

Changes and innovation define the recent past and present at swisstopo: the Swiss Federal Office’s fields of activity are expanding, the legal bases are being adapted to the needs of the day and the Topographic Landscape Model (TLM) is profoundly changing the production of geodata.