Charting the Unknown presents a history of GIS technology that takes readers back more than four decades to the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, where a variety of professionals converged to rethink thematic mapping, spatial analysis, and what we now call GIS. Lavishly illustrated, 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. Any current user of GIS technology will be fascinated to find out some of the complex origins of the GIS toolkit.
The book includes a CD–ROM containing interviews with important figures at the Harvard Laboratory, three movies showing animated visualization, and scanned copies of Context publications (from 1968 to 1983) describing research and research-related activities at the lab.

Nick Chrisman is a former researcher at the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, where he was employed from 1972 to 1982. Chrisman received his doctorate from the University of Bristol in England. He is currently a professor of geomatic sciences at Université Laval in Québec City, Canada, and scientific director of the Geomatics for Informed Decisions (GEOIDE) Network.

ISBN: 9781589481183    2006   232 pages   $34.95

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Click the button below to order Charting the Unknown : How Computer Mapping at Harvard Became GIS online from ESRI's GIS Bookstore, or call 1-800-447-9778. If ordering from outside the U.S., see ordering options.