Redlands, California - Inside a laboratory at Harvard University in 1965, a group of forward-thinking computer scientists, geographers, and others began to push the boundaries of computer mapping into an exciting new territory: geographic information systems (GIS) technology.

Today many people use GIS computer software for data analysis and mapping but few know about those long ago Harvard experiments that helped create it. Nick Chrisman, professor of geomatic sciences at Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada, tells the story in his new book, Charting the Unknown: How Computer Mapping at Harvard Became GIS, published by ESRI Press.

In Charting the Unknown, Chrisman tells how Howard Fisher, a retired architect from Chicago, started the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis in the mid-1960s with Ford Foundation grant money. His book covers topics such as early computer mapping software and experiments in computer cartography.  Programming ventures such as SYMAP, SYMVU, POLYVRT, and others led to ODYSSEY, the prototype for modern GIS software, writes Chrisman, who himself worked as a researcher at the lab from 1972 to 1982.

Lavish maps, drawings, diagrams, and photos accompany the text. The book also includes a CD-ROM containing three historic short films showing animated visualization, plus videotaped interviews with some of the lab's creative minds including Allan Schmidt, the lab's former executive director; Jack Dangermond, founder and president of ESRI; and Scott Morehouse, director of software development at ESRI.

Charting the Unknown: How Computer Mapping at Harvard Became GIS (ISBN: 1-58948-118-6, 228 pages, $34.95), is available at online retailers and bookstores worldwide or can be purchased at www.esri.com/esripress or by calling 1-800-447-9778. Outside the United States, contact your local ESRI distributor. Visit www.esri.com/international for a current distributor list. ESRI Press books are distributed to the trade by Independent Publishers Group. Call 1-800-888-4741 or visit www.ipgbook.com.

 
About ESRI Press
ESRI Press publishes books on GIS, cartography, and the application of spatial analysis to many areas of public and private endeavor including land-use planning, health care, education, business, government, science, and many others. The complete selection of GIS titles from ESRI Press can be found on the Web at www.esri.com/esripress.

About ESRI
Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.