Thursday, 1 August 2024

๐Ÿงญ (11. 738)

Via the Map Room, we are directed to Map Happenings’ tenth instalment of cartographic innovations (previously) that changed how we navigate in this in the long tail of that led to the founding and subsequent demise of MapQuest. A printing concern in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—notably in Amish country, a culture that famously eschews the transportation and technological developments that lead up to our subject, established in the mid-nineteenth century by one Richard Robert Donnelley, which acquired clients commissioning catalogues, magazines, telephone directories and marketing material convinced oil companies to distribute road maps (in the same vein as Michelin guides) for drivers and distributors ultimately a century later to Donnelley Cartographic Services and in 1990 a partnership with a startup called Spatial Data Services, accruing more clients in the industries of car-rental, travel agents, real-estate and motoring associations. Within a few years, accelerated and informed by the burgeoning internet, MapQuest was formed and expanded globally—the first (dis)service to offer geocentric advertising and satellite imagery. I can remember carrying around printouts for various itineraries, creased and well-worn or otherwise. Much more at the links above.