William Rankin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226339368
- eISBN:
- 9780226339535
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226339535.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Just after World War II, the US Army created a single global grid system that was meant to overlay the patchwork of local and national grids discussed in the previous chapter. This system – the ...
More
Just after World War II, the US Army created a single global grid system that was meant to overlay the patchwork of local and national grids discussed in the previous chapter. This system – the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) – gave every point on earth an easy-to-use coordinate, measured in meters, that could replace latitude and longitude for nearly all tasks. It was quickly adopted for US and NATO military operations, and then its creators – specialists in geodesy at the US Army Map Service – pushed it aggressively as an international solution. By the end of the Cold War, UTM was in use in most non-Communist countries, while the Soviet bloc was unified by its own, very similar, counterpart. This chapter argues that UTM succeeded in creating a transnational space that was practical and consequential in ways that representational mapping projects like the International Map could never be. It was a cartographic technology, but the subjectivity it created was an embedded one, and its larger politics were more about on-the-ground coordination and intervention than the collection of knowledge at a central mapping archive.Less
Just after World War II, the US Army created a single global grid system that was meant to overlay the patchwork of local and national grids discussed in the previous chapter. This system – the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) – gave every point on earth an easy-to-use coordinate, measured in meters, that could replace latitude and longitude for nearly all tasks. It was quickly adopted for US and NATO military operations, and then its creators – specialists in geodesy at the US Army Map Service – pushed it aggressively as an international solution. By the end of the Cold War, UTM was in use in most non-Communist countries, while the Soviet bloc was unified by its own, very similar, counterpart. This chapter argues that UTM succeeded in creating a transnational space that was practical and consequential in ways that representational mapping projects like the International Map could never be. It was a cartographic technology, but the subjectivity it created was an embedded one, and its larger politics were more about on-the-ground coordination and intervention than the collection of knowledge at a central mapping archive.
William Rankin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226339368
- eISBN:
- 9780226339535
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226339535.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Over the last several decades, paper maps have been gradually displaced by new electronic navigation systems like GPS. For many geographic tasks, the map’s familiar god’s-eye view from nowhere has ...
More
Over the last several decades, paper maps have been gradually displaced by new electronic navigation systems like GPS. For many geographic tasks, the map’s familiar god’s-eye view from nowhere has thus been exchanged for the much more embedded experience of electronic coordinates, with a new focus on geographic points rather than large areas. This book argues that this shift in geographic knowledge should be seen quite broadly as a change in both the macro-politics of territory and the everyday micro-politics of geographic space. It presents the history of the mapping sciences in the twentieth century through three of its most important global projects – the International Map of the World, the Universal Transverse Mercator grid, and the Global Positioning System – and traces a widespread retreat from the authority of representational maps in favor of the pragmatism of GPS and its many predecessors. It also questions the usual understanding of globalization as a battle between national territory and global networks. The advent of GPS does not mean that territory is losing its relevance, but rather that there are now new forms of territory – pointillist, non-exclusive, and provisional – that may or may not align with the sovereign space of states. Conceived narrowly, this book is a deep history of GPS and its relationship to earlier forms of mapping. But more expansively, it is also a cultural and political history of geographic space itself.Less
Over the last several decades, paper maps have been gradually displaced by new electronic navigation systems like GPS. For many geographic tasks, the map’s familiar god’s-eye view from nowhere has thus been exchanged for the much more embedded experience of electronic coordinates, with a new focus on geographic points rather than large areas. This book argues that this shift in geographic knowledge should be seen quite broadly as a change in both the macro-politics of territory and the everyday micro-politics of geographic space. It presents the history of the mapping sciences in the twentieth century through three of its most important global projects – the International Map of the World, the Universal Transverse Mercator grid, and the Global Positioning System – and traces a widespread retreat from the authority of representational maps in favor of the pragmatism of GPS and its many predecessors. It also questions the usual understanding of globalization as a battle between national territory and global networks. The advent of GPS does not mean that territory is losing its relevance, but rather that there are now new forms of territory – pointillist, non-exclusive, and provisional – that may or may not align with the sovereign space of states. Conceived narrowly, this book is a deep history of GPS and its relationship to earlier forms of mapping. But more expansively, it is also a cultural and political history of geographic space itself.
