Geography, Harvard, and Digital Mapping

Ed Horwood's 1962 'Map' of Blight in Spokane

A week ago, I presented a paper, "Geography, Harvard, and Digital Mapping", as part of the Department of Geography Coffee Hour at Penn State University. Many thanks to Lise Nelson, Anthony Robinson, and Chris Fowler for inviting and hosting. Watch here.

Abstract: 
The origin stories that surround geographic information systems focus in on the 1960s, as a period of intense advancements in computer supported cartography. In this presentation, I examine one site of such innovation: the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics (and Spatial Analysis), founded by Howard Fisher in 1965. By examining the growing interest and expansion of computational methods in the analysis and representation of spatial data, I reconsider and rescale what we might mean by innovations in digital mapping.

Addendum:
Special thanks to Tim Wallace for using his NYTimes skills to create my own animated gif. :)