HISTORY OF MAPPING TECHNOLOGIES

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HISTORY OF MAPPING TECHNOLOGIES
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Earliest Known maps
The earliest known maps are of the heavens, not
the earth. Dots dating to 16,500 BCE found on the
walls of the Lascaux caves map out part of the
night sky. Associated with the animal drawings
are also track lines and tallies thought to
depict migration routes. While simplistic in
comparison to modern technologies, these early
records mimic the two-element structure of modern
GIS, an image associated with attribute
information.
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Babylonian Map of the World
As civilizations emerged, mapping also developed.
This is a clay tablet from Babylon is in the
center of the map parallel lines at the left
seem to represent the southern marshes, and a
curved line coming from right appears to
represent the Zagros Mountains. There are seven
small interior circles at the perimeter areas
within the circle, and they appear to represent
seven cities.
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Importance of Ancient Greece in Map Making
Greeks made an invaluable contribution to mapping
and geography.
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500 BCE Hecataeus creates one of the first maps
of the known world improving on Anaximander.
Hecatæus's map describes the earth as a circular
plate with an encircling Ocean and Greece in the
centre of the world. The map shows the world
divided into two continents, Asia and Europe. He
depicts the line between the Pillars of Hercules
through the Bosporus, and the Don River as a
boundary between the two.
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Aristotle
While the idea of a spherical earth was
postulated by previous Greek philosophers,
including Pythagoras Aristotle (384322 BCE)
proves that the earth is spherical with the
following evidence. Lunar eclipse makes a
circular shadow on the moon Ships sink on the
horizon Some stars can be seen from some
locations of the earth but not from others
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Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes (275195 BCE) was able to calculate
the circumference of the Earth to 99.5 accuracy
by calculating the heights of shadows in
Alexandria, and further up the Nile, where a the
sun shown straight down a well on the summer
solstice. He knew the distance between these to
locations and the height of the column and shadow
in Alexandria. From this he calculated the
angular difference between the locations and
extrapolated the distance to a total of 360
degrees.
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Ptolemy
Ptolemy c. AD 30 revolutionized the depiction of
the spherical earth on a map, and suggested
precise methods for fixing the position of
geographic features on its surface using a
coordinate system with parallels of latitude and
meridians of longitude. Ptolemy's eight-volume
atlas Geographia is a prototype of modern mapping
and GIS. It included an index of place-names,
with the latitude and longitude of each place to
guide the search, scale, conventional signs with
legends, and the practice of orienting maps so
that north is at the top and east to the right of
the mapa universal custom today.
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Chinese Mapping
In ancient China, geographical literature spans
back to the 5th century BC. The oldest extant
Chinese maps come from the State of Qin, dated
back to the 4th century BC. An early Western Han
Dynasty (202 BC 9 AD) silk map found in tomb 3
of Mawangdui, depicting the Kingdom of Changsha
and Kingdom of Nanyue in southern China (note
the south direction is oriented at the top, north
at the bottom).
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India Mapping
In India early forms of cartography of India
included legendary paintings maps of locations
described in Indian epic poetry. .
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Islamic Mapping
The Arab geographer, Muhammad al-Idrisi, produced
his medieval atlas Tabula Rogeriana in 1154. He
incorporated the knowledge of Africa, the Indian
Ocean and the Far East, gathered by Arab
merchants and explorers with the information
inherited from the classical geographers to
create the most accurate map of the world up
until his time. It remained the most accurate
world map for the next three centuries. Note that
the north is at the bottom, and so the map
appears "upside down" compared to modern
cartographic conventions.
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European Mapping History
Gerardus Mercator (15121594) was a Flemish
cartographer who in his quest to make the world
look right on the maps developed new projection
(called Mercator projection) using mathematical
formulas. From then on, the image of the world
that he produced on his map from 1569 becomes a
conventional view of the world that we are
accustomed today. This map was drawn by his son
Romold in 1595.
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Mapping and Colonization
In the Age of Exploration, from the 15th century
to the 17th century, European cartographers both
copied earlier maps (some of which had been
passed down for centuries) and drew their own
based on explorers' observations and new
surveying techniques. The invention of the
magnetic compass, telescope and sextant enabled
increasing accuracy. This nautical chart by
Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel (1504c.
1504), one of the first based on astronomical
observations and to depict a scale of latitudes.
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Mapping and scientific discovery
Maps have played an important role in scientific
discovery.
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Lewis and Clark
The famous map of Lewis and Clark's expedition.
It changed mapping of northwest America by
providing the first accurate depiction of the
relationship of the sources of the Columbia and
Missouri rivers, and the Rocky Mountains..
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Evolution Wallace Line , biogeography
Alfred Russell Wallace, a contemporary of Darwin,
helped to develop the theory of evolution by
creating a map of the world titled the
Geographical Distribution of Animals. The map
which started the field of Biogegraphy, shows
Wallace's six biogeographical regions which is
explained by evolutionary theory.
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Epidemiology - John Snow 1854 map of cholera
John Snow began the science of medical
epidemiology by using a spot map to illustrate
how cases of cholera were centered around the
Broad Street pump in the London epidemic of 1854.
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Plate tectonics Alfred Wegener
Alfred Wegener used mapping to postulate his
theory of continental drift in the early 1900s.
Similar plant and animal fossils are found around
different continent shores, suggesting that they
were once joined. Wegeners idea was ridiculed
by the majority of the scientific community but
he has since been proven correct.
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Importance of Mapping in War Making
Cold War 1950s satellite spying film
retrieval Gulf War 1 GPS extensively used
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USGSNational Geodetic Survey
The USGS is Americas civil mapping agency.
Created by an act of Congress on March 3, 1879.
It was charged with the "classification of the
public lands, and examination of the geological
structure, mineral resources, and products of the
national domain." This task was driven by the
need to inventory the vast lands added to the
United States by the Louisiana Purchase in
1803. The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) defines
and manages a national coordinate system,
providing the foundation for transportation and
communication mapping and charting and a
multitude of scientific and engineering
applications.
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First Aerial Photography
Aerial photography was first practiced by the
French photographer and balloonist Gaspard-Félix
Tournachon, known as "Nadar", in 1858 over Paris,
France..
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First Satellite Imagery
First satellite photographs of Earth were made
August 14, 1959 by the US satellite Explorer 6.
All satellite images produced by NASA are
published by Earth Observatory and are freely
available to the public. Several other countries
have satellite imaging programs, and a
collaborative European effort launched the ERS
and Envisat satellites carrying various sensors.
There are also private companies that provide
commercial satellite imagery. Google now has
their own satellite.
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Computer Mapping Begins
The "Canada Geographic Information System" (CGIS)
created in 1962 was the first GIS and was used to
store, analyze, and manipulate data collected for
the Canada Land Inventory.
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GIS comes to Desktop Computing
By the early 1980s, commercial vendors of GIS
software emerged, combining the first generation
approach to separation of spatial and attribute
information with a second generation approach to
organizing attribute data into database
structures.
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2000s web mapping matures
By the end of the 20th century, platforms and
users were beginning to export the concept of
viewing GIS data over the Internet.
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Google Earth, Google Maps mashupsOpenStreetMap
200506 Google Earth, The first version of
Google Earth was released building on the virtual
globe metaphor. Terrain and buildings can be
viewed 3 dimensionally. The KML (XML based)
markup language allows users to integrate their
own personal content. This virtual globe needs
special software and doesn't run in a web browser.