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 ...

Continue reading "A brief history of online mapping" »