A tip on the hat for The Map Room (again):

“Flying Cameras Map America for War”, an article from the May 1939 issue of Popular Science, has been reprinted on the always-fascinating Modern Mechanix blog. The article looks at the state of the art with respect to aerial photography just before the Second World War, with a focus on the use of stereo photography to map terrain.

Link and quote via Theron Hatch who also points to special sights:

Las Vegas has to be the coolest before and after imagery, albeit mostly black and white. You can also check out Manhattan and see before and after imagery of the World Trade Center buildings.

Mapping is older than browsers

From a wonderful story of the April 2006 edition of The NewYorker:

In 1909, an engineer named J. W. Jones invented a device called the Jones Live-Map, which connected to a car’s odometer. It consisted of a glass-enclosed dial, on which you could place a disk representing a particular trip. The disk had mileage numbers around the perimeter and driving directions printed like spokes on the face. As you progressed down the road, the disk would rotate, telling you where you were and what to do. Live-Map No. 16, for example, guided the “motorist tourist” from Columbus Circle to Waterbury, Connecticut (specifically, the Elton Hotel), telling him, at various intervals, to “take right fork at flag pole,” “pass under trolley arch,” or “caution for dangerous curves.”

In the early '90s, Xerox Parc ...

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