A Time Before GPS

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This is a snap of an old map I've found. It did remind me of the old Geography lessons I learnt. I was fairly good at the subject. But I I didn't bother to think much about the creation of the maps and how these things about reading/making a map came into the world. It was already the time of Google Earth and GPS. GPS wasn't very common. But satellites were a thing. The Geography stuff at times felt like letter writing.

This random portion of the map and getting in touch with some 19th century fiction got me thinking about the maps of old times. Little portions of maps like this used to mean life over death at some instances. Colonialism had a massive load of human rights violations but you can't discredit the efforts of the adventurous explorers. Many of them didn't have anything against the locals. They only kept their mouths shut on the matters of military expansion.

At a time of no satellite photography and not even with planes to fly, some people made these maps. These maps include a great detail of things about the landscape if you know how to read them. Just few lines and numbers can make a person visualize the entire Geography and as a kid I thought of these as a little ugly. I mean why can't they just use color coding and everything.

But how does an explorer with a pencil and paper do color coding. They had to create detailed simplicity. Maybe in the future we'll think of the cybersecurity measures in a funny way. It would seem funny to have different passwords for different services. It would be funny to fit on clothes you buy. It would be funny to drive vehicles. It would be funny to go to the office.

But before all of those things, somebody had to go through hell and invent stuff.

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