3pointD.com

During my brief stay at the University of California at Berkeley, one of my favorite classes was an introduction to the history of science. (Favorite in theory; I’m not sure how many sessions I actually showed up for.) Since then, I’ve always enjoyed reading science and technology histories, stuff like What the Dormouse Said, for instance (which made it even cooler to get to talk with Doug Engelbart). Now there’s a new history of GIS (geographical information science) out from the publishing arm of the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., a private-sector GIS research firm. The book is called Charting the Unknown: How Computer Mapping at Harvard Became GIS, and tells of a convergence of cartographers, artists and computer scientists at Harvard in the 1960s that eventually led to GIS as the science we know today. Sounds like good reading. And it comes in a nice multimedia package, as well. More information from ESRI. [Via press release, quoted below.]

In Charting the Unknown, [Nick Chrisman, professor of geomatic sciences at Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada,] tells how Howard Fisher, a retired architect from Chicago, started the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis in the mid-1960s with Ford Foundation grant money. His book covers topics such as early computer mapping software and experiments in computer cartography. Programming ventures such as SYMAP, SYMVU, POLYVRT, and others led to ODYSSEY, the prototype for modern GIS software, writes Chrisman, who himself worked as a researcher at the lab from 1972 to 1982.

Lavish maps, drawings, diagrams, and photos accompany the text. The book also includes a CD-ROM containing three historic short films showing animated visualization, plus videotaped interviews with some of the lab’s creative minds including Allan Schmidt, the lab’s former executive director; Jack Dangermond, founder and president of ESRI; and Scott Morehouse, director of software development at ESRI.