* Early British and American contenders include the animated lines drawn over maps in two documentaries. The first appears over a map of the Pacific Ocean in Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Pacific, the film tracking Martin and Osa Johnson’s 1918 adventures to the Solomon Isles; and The Great White Silence (1924), Herbert Ponting’s film of the British heroic/tragic quest for the South Pole, in which moving black lines show the different paths across the Great Ice Barrier pursued by Amundsen and Scott.

* There is another nice parody in the ever-aware Family Guy. Peter and Brian float over the Middle East in a balloon and the countries appear below them as coloured slabs. “Huh, so that’s what it looks like from up here,” Brian observes.