Harry Beck

Henry Charles Beck (4 June 190218 September 1974) was an English technical draughtsman who created the first diagrammatic Tube map for the London Underground in 1931. Beck drew the diagram after being laid off by the Signalling Department of Underground Electric Railways of London. He started his career in the 1920s as an engineering draughtsman with the London Underground Signals Office, where he primarily worked on schematics for electrical systems.

In 1931, while unemployed, he developed his simplified map of the London Underground system, which was initially rejected but later accepted. On 16 September 1933 he married Nora Beck, at St Michael and All Angels' church parish church in Mill Hill, Middlesex. They had no children. In 1947 he began teaching typography and colour design at the London School of Printing and Kindred Trades, where he remained until retirement. The geographical-based map, used immediately before Beck's, in 1932, was produced by the underground map designer for the period 1926–1932, F. H. Stingemore. It was Stingemore's idea to slightly expand the central area of the map for ease of reading.

The map after Beck

Beck tried to regain control of the map through threatening legal action, but in 1965 he abandoned the attempt, "bitter and betrayed by the very organisation he had helped, so admirably, to promote."

Design Icon As part of the Transported by Design programme of activities, on 15 October 2015, after two months of public voting, Harry Beck's tube map was elected by Londoners as number 3 of the 10 favourite transport design icons.

Other works In 1938 he produced a diagram of the entire rail system of the London region (as far as St Albans in the north, Ongar in the north east, Romford in the east, Bromley in the south east, Mitcham in the south, Hinchley Wood in the south west, Ashford in the west, and Tring in the north west). It included both the Underground and mainlines. It was not published at the time but was seen in Ken Garland's book, first published in 1994; it took until 1973 until any official attempt was made to replicate a rail diagram for the entire London region.

Beck produced at least one map for British Railways. After nationalisation, the Eastern Region commissioned Beck to produce a map of the suburban lines out of Marylebone, King's Cross, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street, similar in scope to earlier maps produced by George Dow for the London & North Eastern Railway.

Recognition

According to some accounts, Beck was never formally commissioned to develop his initial idea, and worked on the map only in his spare time. He was thus never actually paid for the map. Other sources report that he was paid a fee of five or ten guineas.

In March 2006 viewers of BBC2's The Culture Show and visitors to London's Design Museum voted Harry Beck's Tube map as their second-favourite British design of the 20th century in the Great British Design Quest. The winner was Concorde and in third place was the Supermarine Spitfire.

GB Railfreight named locomotive 66721 after Beck in January 2007.

In January 2009 the Royal Mail included Beck's map when it issued a set of postage stamps celebrating British design classics.

In March 2013 a blue plaque was unveiled on the house where Beck was born, in Wesley Road in Leyton, to mark the 80th anniversary of the Tube map.

In 2021 a play, The Truth About Harry Beck, was staged at the Theatre Royal Bath's Ustinov Studio. The play portrays Beck's journey to create the Tube map and the challenges he faced along the way, focusing on his commitment, and the role of his wife, Nora, in supporting his work. In 2024 the play was staged at the London Transport Museum's Cubic Theatre.