I love maps. I think that I always have. Here are some of my favorites. Birdseye maps like this one of Austin used to be popular in the late 1800s. The Gallery of Maps in the Vatican Museums is one of my favorite spots. And of course, Middle Earth But the maps that you are used to (like the ones on Google), those are relatively new inventions. When I was growing up, everyone used to have huge road atlases in the trunks of their cars for road trips. Maybe some of you still have them, but I removed mine almost 20 years ago. Major cities had zoomed in insets to show local roads. You would have to plan out trips ahead of time and hope that there wasn't bad traffic. If there was, you could pull over, get the atlas out of your trunk, and plan a new route. I remember doing this in Tennessee once when moving Mrs. Goertz's sister down to Texas for college. A step up from atlases was GPS devices (they weren't always in phones). GPS was originally developed for military purposes a...
Blog started at my students' urging. Many different things will be talked about here.