Traditional US yachtsmen feared the beginning of the end of paper charts was upon them when the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration announced they were to stop bulk lithographic printing of nautical charts. However NOAA say they may be changing the chart production process but they will NOT stop the production of paper charts.

The Agency explain they are working with private companies to make them better: printed in brighter colours and available for fast delivery to the door. Most importantly, they are up-to-date to the moment ordered. These improved paper charts are NOAA-certified print-on-demand (POD) nautical charts created by NOAA Coast Survey cartographers.

For more than 150 years, the traditional paper chart, in the US, has been printed in bulk on government printing presses, using the lithographic process. Lithographs were the latest and greatest technological achievement in the early 1850s, when Coast Survey superintendent Alexander Bache ordered Coast Survey personnel to explore the potential applications of lithography for printing maps cheaply and easily. Since the charts could be printed on cheaper and far thinner paper, lithographic copies could be folded, which was strategically important as the nation prepared for Civil War.