Charting the Unknown: How Computer Mapping at Harvard Became GIS

Charting the Unknown takes readers back more than four decades to the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis where a variety if professionals converged to rethink thematic mapping, spatial analysis, and what we now call GIS. The book includes a CD that contains interviews with important figures at the Harvard Laboratory, three movies showing animated, visualization, and scanned copies of Context publications (from 1968 to 1983) describing research-related activities at the Lab.

Nick Chrisman is an alumnus of the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, the designer of POLYVRT, and a co-designer of ODYSSEY. He is the author of "Exploring Geographic Information," a professor in geomatic sciences at Universite Laval, and the scientific director of the GEOIDE network. He lives in Quebec City, Quebec.