Bernard J.S. Cahill

B.J.S. Cahill (Bernard Joseph Stanislaus Cahill, 1866-1944), cartographer and architect, was the inventor of the octahedral "Butterfly Map" (published 1909; patented 1913). He was an early proponent of the San Francisco Civic Center (1899-1909); and designer of the Columbarium of San Francisco.

The Butterfly World Map, like Buckminster Fuller's later Dymaxion map of 1943 and 1954, enabled all continents to be displayed as uninterrupted, and with reasonable fidelity to a globe. Cahill demonstrated this principle by also inventing a rubber-ball globe which could be flattened under a pane of glass in the "Butterfly" form, then return to its ball shape.