Spying on Those You Care About

My wife is flying through thunderstorms from Philadelphia to Fort Myers, Florida. I just got a free iPhone app called "Flight Aware" so I can see where she is. You can also see the thunderstorms moving out to sea.

I can also see what kind of air traffic she'll be up against in the area.

And take look at the airport area to see how much more traveling she needs to do from the airport. This is almost as cool as Passur's live airport monitors!

UPDATE - she made it! Thank you airline industry!

Gas Station Maps-The Early Days

According to Early Gulf Road Maps of Pennsylvania the Gulf Oil Corporation is usually credited with the first drive in gas station - on Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh (where the company was headquartered) and the first freely distributed road maps.

Both of these credits are subject to debate - see footnote two from the article above, however the early oil company road maps were predominantly from Gulf. The first Gulf maps were made by W. B. Akins, a Pittsburgh advertising man. After a few years they switched to professional map making companies, first the American Blue Book Company, then Rand McNally and then H.M. Gousha after Harry Gousha left Rand McNally to start his own company.

Below are some details from a 1915 road map of Pennsylvania produced by the Automobile Blue Book Company and distributed by Gulf.

What is interesting (to me) about these maps is the importance of certain places (and lack of others) in the era before expressways.

The cover talks up "that good Gulf gasoline" and the "sterling qualities of this excellent petroleum product." It also advertises Supreme Auto Oil - "Its high viscosity renders it a perfect warm weather lubricant and its low cold test an Ideal Winter Oil, - as it flows freely at zero." 

In addition to road maps Gulf also distributed trip itinerary maps. Here are routes from Pittsburgh to Buffalo and Cleveland (marked in orange), with a listing of the places in between and the mileage. I like the quaint picture too.

Below is a 1917 "Half Day Tour" from Philadelphia to New Hope, Lambertville and Trenton. These tours list detailed routes but don't tell you what to see along the way or why you should go to places like Lambertville. They do tell you where to fill up your tank - in this case at the Gulf station at Broad and Hunting Park in North Philadelphia. Gulf only had seven stations in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey at the time.

Of course I chose this tour for my own personal history. We lived in this area and took many of these trips.

Here is a 1925 Gulf map of parking regulations in downtown Pittsburgh. By then there were 14 Gulf stations in Pittsburgh. The takeaway from this map is to either try to find a space near the Point or on Congress St if you don't want to keep moving your car.

I will finish up with a detailed itinerary for the often changing Lincoln Highway, renamed Quebec Route 366 briefly in summer 2011. I have had inquiries about the specific route of this road - here it was in 1925. Street by street directions are listed for Pennsylvania. The New Jersey route is listed by town only.

Thanks to Historical Maps of Pennsylvania for the content of this post.

Public Redistricting Contest

Azavea, a GIS software development company is launching an online redistricting contest for Philadelphia in an attempt at a non-partisan, collaborative process. From techPresident:
Amid Protest Over Closed Philadelphia Redistricting Process, Tech Firm Decides to Start Its Own.

Giving the public a nice and easy interface to make their own districts is a good idea but the City Council can still choose to ignore it. Results will be posted on the Redistricting the Nation website. This site also has a draw your own district interface and lists the Top 10 least compact congressional districts in the country such as Maryland's District 2.

We're Number 5!

As children, we knew our city was the fourth largest and that it would always be that way. Then in 1990 something awful happened-Houston moved ahead of us. Still, we could take solace in the fact that our metropolitan area was number 4 and Houston only got ahead by swallowing up a bunch of suburbs. Now that the Census 2010 verdict is in we are number 5 on all counts and just barely hanging on. These maps from the Philadelphia Inquirer illustrate our angst.

 Dallas? Are they counting by number of parking spaces?

Using county based metropolitan areas creates some size anomalies and makes the maps look a bit goofy. Riverside? Why do they even get their own metropolitan area? It looks like they're including San Bernardino county also, making for one huge skyscraper that is mostly desert.

The north facing perspective also means losing San Francisco and Baltimore behind their larger "neighbors" but if you flipped it around you'd lose San Diego so something had to give. Of course all of this seems pretty insignificant when compared with the largest cities in the world. A little perspective goes a long way.

Maps on Album Covers

I thought it would be a good idea to spotlight album covers featuring maps but it turns out that there are fewer than I expected. I had to dig in some obscure places to find the ones below. Not having an exhaustive music collection I may have missed something obvious or notable. Let me know and I'll add it to the list.

I'll start with one of my personal favorite covers. Nile Rodgers of the disco/funk band Chic came out with a solo album titled "Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove" with a cover featuring lower Manhattan with faux latin place names like "Uptownicus" and "Nova Joysey."

Probably the best known album on this list is Chicago XI-Baby what a big surprise!

Martha and the Muffins went with the topographic Toronto look.

Early American folk music specialists Tasker's Chance used this historic map of part of Maryland.

Representing the world of experimental classical music is the Chicago Sound Map.








Hardcore metal band Slayer's "World Painted Blood" has a collector's edition with four different covers that when put together form a world illustrated with skulls and bones.

 This is more of a globe than a map but I've always been partial to Yes so I had to include "Fragile."



Canadian popsters Barenaked Ladies used an oddly styled Michigan for a live album with the somewhat clever title "Talk to the Hand."

Two Philadelphia area bands previously covered here have some good map artwork. The Strapping Fieldhands map showing sightings of the New Jersey Devil and Slo-Mo's map of the Northern Liberties neighborhood.

Finally, a 4 CD compilation called "Left of the Dial: Dispatched from the '80s Underground" used some map mashups for their covers. Don't try to use the map below for wayfinding!

UPDATE: for more good stuff see the follow up post.

Map of the Week-Baseball Week 1

Here in the US of A the baseball season has begun! To honor the occasion I have a couple of baseball related posts. The indiemaps blog maps out where balls were hit. The first one is of a perfect game pitched by Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox on July 23rd, 2009. The small blue dots are hits and the pink ones are outs. Click on the image to get to an interactive google map of US Cellular Field in Chicago where you can click each point for more information. Highlighted is a 9th inning home run saving catch over the wall that helped preserve the perfect game.

The blog entry discusses the details of how the maps are created using these diagrams from MLB Gameday. The points were converted from pixels to geographic coordinates. The diagram locations are based on observation and may not be as accurate as what you might pay to get from for-profit firms.


The next map, from a Phillies-Pirates game played at Citizen's Bank Park in Philadelphia, shows how different ballpark dimensions can affect the outcome of a game. The hit locations are shown (map on left) then transferred to PNC Park in Pittsburgh (map on right) to show how some of the home runs would have stayed in the park in PNC's larger outfield. Note that differing stadium orientations necessitate rotating the coordinates.

The entry continues with a long discussion about how to transfer the data and a link to the code on github in case you want to try plotting your own favorite game. Good luck! Go Phils!

The Philadelphia Bike Map Wiki

I was looking for bicycling information for my upcoming trip to Philadelphia when I came across the Philadelphia Bike Map Wiki. This page was created by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. It allows users to locate hazards, good cycling routes, accidents, construction, favorite bike shops and places where bike lanes are blocked or ignored by drivers or the authorities.

If you click on the angry yellow driver icons you get some truly awful stories about the kind of drivers we cyclists routinely have to deal with. Even in a bronze medal winning community.




There is also lots of good information about places to avoid and good places to go- it's not all negative stuff. I don't know if this wiki has reached City Hall to help improve conditions or the (lack of) law enforcement but at least the cyclists have some good information. Now if I can only remember what info I was looking for originally....

Map of the Week-The Mural Arts Project

Driving through Philadelphia the other day we saw some pretty cool murals. I remembered that I had some info about the Mural Arts Program but had not been able to locate a comprehensive map. There are tour maps of the Center City Area but nothing showing the outer 'hoods. Upon further review I found muralBase created by the University of Pennsylvania's Cartographic Modeling Lab. You can choose a theme, artist, zip code or year and get a map showing the location of murals as well as descriptions and pictures about each one. Below is the map that results when you choose "Latino" as the theme - clustered in the Latino sections of town. On the right side is a mural of El Yunque - the rain forest in Puerto Rico.












Here's a nice one - Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Projection!

Map of the Week 121-Colbert Maps Pennsylvania

It's an exciting week at Comedy Central as the Colbert Report is in Philadelphia for next week's Pennsylvania primary. The most striking feature of his Philadelphia set is a ridiculous map of Pennsylvania. Below is a video where he explains the map and Ben Franklin demonstrates early GIS map zooming capabilities (slow load warning)


By the way if youse want to better understand the Philly accent click here - the pictures will really help!
You'll also some good cheesesteak info on those pages.

Schmap of the Week

Schmap is a Widget you can add to your website to post info about your team, band, city, or other interests. Better to show then tell.



Below you can see the latest exploits of my favorite pathetic hockey team - the Flyers. Click a puck and see how they did in that location - you can also look at the arena - this works better in baseball when you're not looking at roofs. If you don't like them, which you probably don't, you can change the team or even the sport by clicking the buttons up top. Above, for a more international perspective is everyone's favorite French league team Paris St Germain.



You can also put up a city tourist guide - I picked Baltimore in honor of the Baltimore Festival of Maps.



Or you can follow your favorite musician such as Avril Lavigne - well she's not really my favorite but I sure like that heart-bone logo.

MOTW #61

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a really good map showing 2006 murders in the city. If you click the map below you can go to the interactive map. Click on any dot to get details about the crime - victim, race, time , weapon, etc. You can also use these as filters to see only daytime murders or murders by "hand". Keep in mind that this a an entire year 's worth of data and in most of the city murder is really not that common an occurrence. Really we have lots of nice neighborhoods! I'm serious!

MOTW #59

This map was originally published for the Philadelphia Daily News to show off our awful luck in the realm of professional sports. The map shows cities with their number of championships won since July, 1983, right after the Sixers won our last major sports title. The original map was interactive and you could get the teams that won by clicking on each city, however this map has been taken off their web site.
As many readers have pointed out we are not the only city crying in our beer.

MOTW #46

This map was done as part of a study of food choices around University City High School in Philadelphia. The map lets you choose categories of food and recreational opportunities in an attempt to advocate for better opportunities to make healthy choices in an inner city neighborhood.

MOTW #7

This is part of the CD cover for "My Buzz Comes Back" from Philly hip-hoppers Slo-Mo and Mic Wrecka. They have a really cool mental map of the Northern Liberties neighborhood in Philadelphia. Oh and the music's darn good too.