Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
41
Cartography: from traditional to electronic
and beyond
David Green and Stephen King
However, the continuing and very rapid
evolution of both microcomputer hardware and
software technology over the years has since
permitted cartography to become another software
application on the desktop computer system. In
many ways, cartography has now become akin to
everyday applications such as word processing,
spreadsheets and databases, and one that no longer
requires the expertise of the specialist cartographer.
With the advent of increasingly user-friendly
systems, it has been possible for more people to
design, create and produce maps without the aid of
a cartographer or indeed the requirement to possess
any cartographic knowledge. Cartography has
become a communication tool available to all,
whether it is for drawing maps to illustrate a journal
paper or topic chapter, a screen map display on a
public information system, or presentational
purposes in a seminar.
As we move towards the millennium, it is
becoming evident that the current and future
computer technology available will provide even
more new and exciting opportunities for both
cartography and cartographers (Green 1994). The
technology will enable a new form of
cartography—one that is less of an electronic
equivalent of the more traditional form of
cartography (a problem that has tended to
overshadow the visual and innovative potential of
cartography in an electronic medium) —but more
flexible in the way that it makes use of information
technology to take the subject—both theory and
INTRODUCTION
Mapping is a fundamental geographical activity, and
as both an academic and a practical subject
cartography has a very long and very well-
documented history (see any textbook on
cartography, e.g. Keates 1973; Cuff and Mattson
1982; Dent 1985; Robinson et al . 1995; Jones 1997;
Dorling and Fairbairn 1997; http://
www.geosys.com/cgi-bin/genobject/cartography/
tig.3eed/). A great deal of theoretical and practical
research has been undertaken over the years in all
areas of the subject, including work on map
projections and coordinate systems, map design (e.g.
use of colour, symbols, legibility and composition),
visualisation and communication, cartograms,
journalistic and propaganda maps, 3D terrain
models, and generalisation, to mention but a few.
With the development of mainframe computers
in the late 1950s and early 1960s, computer-assisted
cartography (CAC) or mapping soon began to
develop quite rapidly (see, for example, publications
such as Peucker 1972; International Cartographic
Association 1980; Taylor 1980; Monmonier 1982;
and Carter 1984). However, until the late 1980s and
early 1990s, CAC remained largely the province of
the mainframe, and subsequently minicomputers,
and the realm of the large institution and the
computer specialist. This is despite the emergence
of the early microcomputers e.g. the Apple II/IIE
and Macintosh, the IBM PC, and others, e.g. BBC,
Atari.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search