Charting the Unknown
2006 - 228 pages $34.95

There are many stories about the origins of geographic information systems technology, and a few of them are true. No matter which story you hear, if you probe a little bit, you will find a connection to the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis. At this Laboratory, beginning in 1965, a varied collection of planners, geographers, cartographers, mathematicians, computer scientists, artists and many other fields converged to rethink thematic mapping, spatial analysis, and what we would now call geographic information systems.

This book explores some of the themes addressed by this fertile interdisciplinary collaboration. It includes some of the early computer mapping software and experimentation in cartography. It also introduces some of the spatial analysis and applications to environmental planning conducted at the Laboratory. It charts the cycles of expansion and decline as the creativity confronted challenges on many fronts. Around the edges are glimpses of some of the key figures involved in this exploration.

Any current user of GIS technology will be fascinated to find out some of the complex origins of the GIS toolkit. There are enduring traces of the Harvard Lab's work to be found throughout the current technological artifacts. There are also sets of challenges that have yet to be fully resolved. Knowing the history of GIS can offer some inspiration for further creativity and some humility at how much was done with such limited resources.

The book includes a CD–ROM packed with information including movies made at the Lab, interviews with some of the key members of the Lab, and historical documents. See the table of contents for a complete listing.

About the author:

Nick Chrisman came to the Laboratory in 1972 from an undergraduate degree in Geography at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. While an undergraduate he digitized maps and converted calform to operate on the UMASS computer. Allan Schmidt hired him before he could enroll in graduate school.

Chrisman quickly became an ardent (often animated) advocate of topological data structures. He designed polyvrt and joined Denis White, Jim Dougenik, and Scott Morehouse to design Odyssey. Once the Odyssey prototype was complete, he traveled to England to complete a Ph.D. on error in GIS data. He took an academic job at University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1982, and then moved to University of Washington in 1987.

Chrisman is the author of Exploring Geographic Information Systems, John Wiley and Sons, Second edition 2002. He has also written articles on various topics from the technological detail, to the social context, of GIS.