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Category: Geographic Information Science

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Computing Space III: Papers of the “Father of GIS” Come to the Library of Congress

Posted by: John Hessler

Today’s post is the third of a series called,”Computing Space,” which will highlight the lives and work of many of the mostly unknown cartographers, geographers, mathematicians, computer scientists, designers and architects who had a hand in the birth of today’s computer cartography.  ’Amateur’ field geographers can speak with authority about the clarifying effects on the …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Computing Space II: Taking Waldo Tobler’s Geography 482

Posted by: John Hessler

Today’s post is the second in a continuing series called,”Computing Space,” which will highlight the lives and work of many of the mostly unknown cartographers, geographers, mathematicians, computer scientists, designers and architects who had a hand in the birth of today’s computer cartography. When working with the archives and personal papers of the pioneers of …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Computing Space I: Ernesto and Kathy Split a Sandwich

Posted by: John Hessler

This post is dedicated to the memory of  Katherine Kiernan, one of the only female programmers at the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, during the early years of the development of Geographical Information Systems. She passed away last year. Today’s post is the beginning of a series called,”Computing Space,” which will highlight …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Computing Space 0: From Hypersurfaces to Algorithms: Saving Early Computer Cartography at the Library of Congress

Posted by: John Hessler

Recently, the Geography and Map Division has undertaken a large scale project to collect manuscripts, technical information,  algorithms, software, and hardware from the earliest days of computer cartography. This project, which is being directed by the author, began as a series of lectures for graduate students that I gave at Johns Hopkins University on the …