On the road to Mapquest

The New Yorker explores the history of Mapquest, with routes from history and technology nicely marked.
There are some enjoyable pieces of pre-Web time, like

the Jones Live-Map, which connected to a car’s odometer. It consisted of a glass-enclosed dial, on which you could place a disk representing a particular trip. The disk had mileage numbers around the perimeter and driving directions printed like spokes on the face. As you progressed down the road, the disk would rotate, telling you where you were and what to do. Live-Map No. 16, for example, guided the “motorist tourist” from Columbus Circle to Waterbury, Connecticut (specifically, the Elton Hotel), telling him, at various intervals, to “take right fork at flag pole,” “pass under trolley arch,” or “caution for dangerous curves.”

And this quiet lyricism:

A map is a piece of art. It is also a form of language—a rendering of information. A good map can occupy the eye and the mind longer than almost any other single page of data, including Scripture, poetry, sheet music, and baseball box scores. A map contains multitudes.

I really like this term from the article, too: ground-truther.

Comments

[EllenK]

I have gotten lost more due to the inaccuracies of MapQuest than any other reason. For example, I live on a culdesac and whenever I access MapQuest the first thing it tells me is to go down an alley rather than out to the street. They don't update their highways and street often enough and far too often their directions are vague enough to be almost funny, if you weren't seriously lost. What the heck is a "near left" anyway?

[Bryan]

It seems common to consider MapQuest as suggestions these days, and to supplement with other sources. I like Google Maps, myself.