Plotting the Web’s future
IDEA No 48
WEB MAPPING
Where maps were static, now they are dynamic. Where before we turned the page of an atlas, now we pan and zoom our way around a screen.
The first interactive map was developed in 1993 by Steve Putz at Xerox PARC. The Interactive Map Viewer automatically generated GIF images based on parameters encoded in the URL. It was an early demonstration of interactive information retrieval on the Web.
In 1994, at the University of Minnesota, the researcher Stephen Lime created UMN MapServer, a Web-based tool for exploring a million acres of wilderness on the Canadian border. The area was under the administration of the US Forestry Service, which saw the potential of Lime’s tool to plot global forestry information. ...
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