On Sep 5, 10:29*pm, "Zen83237" wrote:
I have only just noticed that the LU underground map is now branded the tube
map, interesting as it also includes the overground lines and the DLR.
When did the Underground as a whole become the Tube?

The "Tube map" has been so called for many years now - though they did
use to call it the "Journey planner" for a number of years beforehand
- that's referred to here by the artist Simon Patterson (he of the
Great Bear):
http://www.thegathering-artscouncilc...simonpatterson

Not sure when it changed to being the "Tube Map" but this suggests it
had happened by 1995:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17889585@N03/3588617911/
(or were the posters and leaflets of the map/diagram referred to by
different names?)

The Underground as a whole hasn't become the Tube though - instead the
'Tube' is just a short-hand term, one that's widely used colloquially
- I think LT may have resisted for a while before eventually giving up
and adopting it themselves (is that fair to say, LT/LU historians?).

Here's an example of it in use on a "London Tube - Diagram of Lines"
leaflet (not quite a "Tube map" but close enough) in 1979:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/slipstreamjc/4348300895/

Also from 1979, "Fly the Tube" poster:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/The-Tube-1979-poster
(search the LT Museum poster collection using the term "the Tube" for
more examples)

"The Tube" is also a registered trade mark (no. 1527320) of TfL -
filed in 1993 and granted in 1995, though obviously used by LT/LU
before this date (organisations weren't quite so fastidious about
intellectual property in years gone by as they are nowadays).

In the period after the creation of the GLA and TfL, but when London
Underground remained under the control of central government (through
LRT), LU has a website which was at the address http://
www.thetube.com - it redirects to the LU modal pages on the TfL
website now, but here's what seems to be the earliest capture of it in
on the Internet Archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/200010182...w.thetube.com/

(the two notable items on that page being "Tube strike latest" and
"Northern line derailment"...)

TfL (and beforehand, LT/LU) seem pretty meticulous in always
capitalising the T in Tube. Nonetheless the widespread application of
the term does seem to somewhat agitate the purists...