Evolution of Analog to Digital Mapping
Early map preparation was all by foot.
You had to go and walk the land.
I'd never heard of photogrammetry before.
What is a stereoplotting instrument?
Oh, there were many things, state-of-the-art cameras.
Various multiplex systems.
The Fairchild system.
The Kelsh plotter projector photographed from a glass plate. We went from optical systems to mechanical
systems.
With every generation, the resolution got better, and the geometric fidelity of the lenses got better.
We got into space imagery early on.
There were the analytical stereoplotters.
Computers that came along as a tool for design.
And then forward image motion compensation. We went to softcopy photogrammetry.
And digital orthophotography.
And then, of course, the digital cameras.
This database wasn't about money or about people. It was about geographic information systems.
Because of the ability to digitize directly, photogrammetry as we knew it reached its apex of evolution.
20 years ago, you would have seen monster pieces of metal.
In the world today, it's almost obsolete. Anybody can get a map just by turning on his computer and
googling it.
You put it into your GPS systems that use a base map that's universally used throughout the world now.
And the appetite for that sort of digital data is almost insatiable.