Historic Geospatial Data

Two hundred years ago today, John Quincy Adams (a future US President) was on a ship called The Horace, captained by Benjamin Beckford, outward bound from Charlestown, just north of Boston in Massachusetts, to St. Petersburg in Russia. There was a heavy swell and a "gale of wind" out of the west-northwest.

Mr. Adams, who was sailing to Russia to serve as President James Madison's minister plenipotentiary to that nation, spent his time that day reading about Timoleon and Paulus Aemilius (in Plutarch, I think), according to his personal one-line-a-day log.

He gave the ship's position as 52 degrees, 46 minutes north latitude and 34 degrees, 30 minutes west longitude, which put them almost exactly halfway between Newfoundland and Ireland, in the north Atlantic.

Now, two centuries later, the folks at the Massachusetts Historical Society have started a project to publish Adams' log in the closest thing to a modern "line-a-day" log -- twitter. They've begun posting each day's entry to a John Quincy Adams twitter account: JQAdams_MHS.


View John Quincy Adams in a larger map

And they have geo-published those entries, using Adams' recording of the ship's position. Now we have both a regular text update of Adams' days, and we have a daily chart showing his location and basic log entries.

That is in addition to his full diaries from the journey, which are also available, and which contain more detail and thoughts. In fact, the Massachusetts Historical Society has 51 volumes of diaries that President Adams kept throughout his life; he was one of those diarists who left a rich legacy for historians and biographers.

Of course I could draw the comparison between the 19th centuries diarists and 21st century bloggers. But I think that, more than any one technique or technology, it is the practice of daily recording of data, location, thoughts, and activities, that is of value here.

Not every diarist or blogger who writes down their thoughts each day will turn out to be a leader that future generations will want to study. But we do hope that every leader will keep such a record for the future. And we don't know ahead of time who those folks will be. So, it is, I think, a good thing to have at least some part of the population in the habit, just in case one of them turns out to be someone special some day.

More Roots of Photogrammetry

The blog Modern Mechanix offers another glimpse at the history of photogrammetry today with a scan from the May, 1939, edition of Popular Science. This is the same blog that gave us a glimpse of terrestrial photography-based surveying earlier this month.

The article, Flying Cameras Map America for War, takes a look at the whole process, including collecting imagery from the belly of a military plane, survey parties recording reference points, and stereoscopic photogrammetry back at the base.

The statement of purpose that opens the article feels oddly familiar to a 21st-century geospatial data coordinator:

From aerial photographs snapped by giant bombers soaring four miles above the earth, U. S. Army engineers are compiling maps that will serve as eyes for our armed forces if they ever have to wage a defensive war on American soil.

The image above is a reproduction of "a stereoscopic image of the kind produced by the multiplex aeroprojector used by U. S. Army engineers in making contour maps from aerial photographs." The image at right is an illustration of how one might make sense of "this seemingly meaningless blur of colored lines" to create a topographic map.

I don't think the second image is an actual illustration of a U.S. Army engineer.

NSGIC Mid-Year Reports: Tuesday Morning Keynote Speaker

Tuesday Morning's Keynote Speaker at the NSGIC Mid-Year was Dr. Edward Papenfuse, the State Archivist in Maryland. He describes himself as having a passion for maps and spoke on a project to preserve historic maps of Maryland.

The Maryland State Archives has, over the years, published collections of maps of Maryland. He outlined the process of finding and writing about those maps.

He also spoke on the lessons that can be learned about the history of a place from the historic maps of that place. He explained how historic maps have been used to help settle a variety of boundary disputes with neighboring states.

Update (3/18/08): Presentation materials from this session are now available on-line.

The Roots of Photogrammetry?

I am not a surveyor and know almost nothing really of photogrammetry, but I was intrigued when I spotted a very brief piece on what may have been early photogrammetry in a scan of a page from the March, 1924, issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.

This was on the blog Modern Mechanix, which posted the page because it also contained a story, with pictures, on novel iconography of the new (in 1924) Church of St. Christopher, in Paris; iconography that included detailed paintings of the saint protecting the operators of plains, trains, and automobiles.

The next headline down the page, however, caught my eye:

Camera for Surveying Saves Both Time and Labor
For registering ground dimensions, a photographic system of surveying, recently devised by a London, England, man, is said to produce results of greater accuracy that the ordinary methods.

I find it helps to read that in the voice of the narrator of a 1920's newsreel.