European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 30, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Computerized Road maps that move along with the car byjoe Waschenbach National geographic s surely As the Earth is round maps Are hat pieces of paper that you hold in your hand not any More. When you reach into the Glove compartment Lor that familiar folded Road map. You May pull out a cassette tape instead. The electronic Road map already available in California shows up As Green lines on a dashboard mounted viewing screen. The map automatically moves As the car moves streets that go by outside also go by on the screen. The electronic map not Only lets you know where you Are a Small stationary arro but where you Are going flashing strand How to get there. You can zoom in for a close up of the neighbouring streets or View the Highway network of an entire metropolitan area. You la never get lost again claims John Korchin of Eta inc., manufacturer of the nation s first in car navigation system. Korshin contends that glancing at a map on a screen is no More distracting to the Driver than looking at the speedometer. It saves fumbling for a paper map or squinting at Street signs he says. The California company has applied modern technology to an ancient polynesian concept of navigation known As Eta. The polynesians sailed the Pacific by imagining that their Canoe was stationary and measuring their Progress by the movement of the islands around them. The Eta system determines the car s position by augmented dead  its components include a Compass shoe Box size computer in the trunk motion sensors on the wheels and a map data base a series of map cassettes four to cover the san Francisco Bay area six for los Angeles. Eta will eventually make cassettes for the rest of the country. It has licensed its design to general motors which plans to offer the mapping system As an option on its cars within a few years. Other us. Automakers Are developing systems of their own some using satellites to track the car s movements. It s accepted throughout the Industry that in car navigation is just around the Corner a spokesman for one Auto manufacturer says. The revolution in Road maps is part of the Renaissance that computers started in cartography. It s been called the biggest revolution in map making since maps have moved a Long Way from the Days when George Washington was a Surveyor. Hot Tonto geographic photo Page 16 the stars and stripes Columbus discovered that the Earth was t Flat and it has moved into High gear in the 1980s. Actually cartography s in its fourth major technological revolution. The printing press brought about the first explains Phillip c. Muehrcke professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin. Computers have turned mountains and canyons Rivers and roads towns and International Borders into millions of numbers. These digitized pieces of maps Are stored on reels of tape. At the command of the computer cartographer who sits at a control console in a dimly lit room they can be called up on a multicoloured display screen and manipulated in hundreds of ways. Before you had to make do with maps somebody else made and shoved in a drawer. Now you can tailor mapping to whatever needs you have Muehrcke says. Enter a new command and Rivers can be made wider or narrower. Misaligned roads can be rerouted. Type in a different number on a world map and the Oleari becomes bluer. Design a Symbol for the thousands of tiny dots that make up International boundaries and they no longer have to be added manually one by one. If Argentina should decide to relocate its capital 500 Miles South to Patagonia the computer can make the move from Buenos Aires in minutes. When Art and cartography Are combined computers do double duty Lenin appeared larger than the other european leaders in a group portrait painted for a National geographic historical map the computer saved the Lime of having the artist repaint it. Within a few hours it was Able to shrink Lenin and enlarge Churchill. Rand Mcnally he nation s largest non government saturday August 30,1986 mapmaker is building an electronic data base for the United slates Canada and Mexico from City streets to interstate highways. Computers will Speed the updating of the publisher s . Road Atlas last year s 20,855 changes were made by hand. In the future computers will Combine in car navigation with information on Points of interest food and lodging. Also in the future says Wayne fish of logistics systems which already provides computerized routing for the trucking Industry and some automobile clubs Are Roadside computer terminals. You la punch in your place or origin destination and up to 15 stops in Between he says. You la get a printout of directions and a crude  by far the largest computerized mapper in the United states is the Federal government which uses High tech cartography for everything from missile guidance systems and bomber targeting to taking the National census. The . Geological Survey has captured the entire country on computer at a Small scale and is in the process of digitizing All of its 55,000 Large scale 1 24.000 maps a ask that is expected to take until the end of the Century. Meanwhile the Agency is involved in a crash program to get maps ready or the 1990 census the first to be taken with computer generated maps. The goal is no gaps or overlaps. They should be the most uniformly accurate census maps Ever used says Alan r. Stevens who is in charge of preparing 1,826 maps of the United Stales. From them the census Bureau will make the 300,000 enumerator maps to be used by local census takers. When the geological Survey turns Over the maps next March it will give the census Bureau reels of magnetic tape not Large Flat sheets