History of Mapping

The 12 ‘Map Happenings’ That Rocked Our World

Part 1 — The First Map
The story of how, many thousands of years ago, the first map came to be.

Part 2 — The Birth of Coordinates
Geographic coordinates haven’t been around for ever. But they have been around for a while. Read the fascinating story of who invented them.

Part 3 — Road Maps!
Think road maps came out when people started driving cars? Wrong! Read on to find out the real story.

Part 4 — The Epic Quest for Longitude
Best selling books have been written and films have been made of this amazing story from the 1700s. It truly is an epic tale.

Part 5 — The Dawn of Tube Maps
The London ‘Tube’ (or subway) was the first of its kind to invent an entirely new kind of map. Now everyone’s copied it. Learn the history of how it came to be. 

Part 6 — The Advent of Computer Based Mapping
Computers started to emerge after the Second World War. Learn about the brilliant minds that first started using them for maps and mapping.

Part 7 — Those Views from Above…
Today we’re all accustomed to looking at satellite and aerial imagery of cities and places. This is the story of how it all came about.

Part 8 — Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Determining your current location is easy. You just open your phone and look at a map. But it wasn’t always that easy. The full story is in this post.

Part 9 — A Curious Phenomenon Called ‘Etak’
This is the story of the world’s first practical navigation system for cars. And it’s an amazing one that is hard to believe!

Part 10 — A Relentless Quest for Maps
Before Google Maps launched in 2005 there was another website that dominated maps on the web. This is the insider story of that site: MapQuest.

Part 11 — Maps, Earth and Views
The fascinating background story about how Google Maps, Google Earth and Street View came to be.

Part 12 — The Whole World In Your Pocket
The launch of iPhone in 2007 didn’t just change how we used phones, it changed how we used maps. But it almost didn’t happen.