Cynthia Light Brown - Mapping and Navigation: Explore the History and Science of Finding Your Way with 20 Projects

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Introduction
Finding Your Way

Chapter 1
Ancient Maps

Chapter 2
Explorers Cross the Seas

Chapter 3
Mapping New Lands and New Skies

Chapter 4
Mapping from Satellites: GPS and Landsat

Chapter 5
What Is GIS?

Chapter 6
Oceans: The Least Known Surface on Earth

Chapter 7
Space: Navigating the Final Frontier

Index

TIMELINE

BCE

1400s BCE: the Chinese start using a grid system to lay out their cities.

500s BCE: a Babylonian map called the Imago Mundi is created showing the world as seven islands surrounding Babylon and the Euphrates River. This is in what is modern-day Iraq.

300s BCE: the Qin dynasty in China makes the first grid maps.

200s BCE: Eratosthenes, the first person to use the word geography, calculates the earths circumference to be about 24,390 miles (36,250 kilometers). He draws a map of the known world using lines of latitude and longitude.

200s BCE: Pei Xiu uses a grid system to show Chinese cities.

100300s CE

120 CE: maps made by Marinus of Tyre are the first in the Roman Empire to show China.

150 CE: Claudius Ptolemy, a Roman citizen living in Egypt, publishes Geographia, which contains a huge list of the names of cities and their locations on a grid system. He also develops detailed maps using latitude and longitude.

300s CE: the Peutinger Map shows the road networks, bodies of water, and settlements in the Roman Empire, as well as distances between cities.

14001500s

1487: Bartholomew Dias (Portugal) discovers the southern tip of Africa.

1492: Christopher Columbus (Italy) discovers the New World.

1497: John Cabot (Italy) discovers Newfoundland, Canada.

14971499: Vasco da Gama (Portugal) discovers a water route between Portugal and India.

1502: Amerigo Vespucci (Italy) explores the New World.

1507: the Waldseemuller Map is the first map to use America as the name for the New World, named after explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

1513: Juan Ponce de Leon (Spain) discovers Florida on his search for the Fountain of Youth.

1513: Vasco Nunez de Balboa (Spain) crosses the Isthmus of Panama and is the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from its eastern shore.

15191522: Ferdinand Magellan (Portugal) sails around the world.

1540: Francisco Vasquez de Coronado (Spain) is the first European to explore the American Southwest in Arizona and New Mexico.

1569: Gerardus Mercator makes his famous map of the world called the Mercator projection.

16001700s

1608: The first telescopes are invented by Hans Lippershey, Zacharias Janssen, and Jacob Metius.

1609: Galileo Galilei is the first person to use a telescope to observe the heavens.

1620: Dutch architect Cornelius Drebel constructs the first submarine. He tests it in the Thames River in England.

1643: Evangelista Torricelli develops the first working barometer.

1668: Isaac Newton invents the first reflecting telescope.

1757: John Bird makes the first sextant.

1773: John Harrison is awarded the prize for inventing the marine chronometer, which tells accurate time at sea and allows for determination of longitude.

1783: the Montgolfier brothers of France launch unmanned flights in a hot air balloon. The first free flight with human passengers soon follows.

1800s

1803: Lewis and Clark set off from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the Corps of Discovery Expedition to explore and map the western United States.

1804: Sir George Cayley of Great Britain flies the first model glider.

1807: President Thomas Jefferson authorizes the Survey of the Coast, which is the first attempt to map the ocean in an organized system.

1855: U.S. Navy Lieutenant Matthew Maury publishes a map that is the first to show underwater mountains in the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

1856: Jean-Marie Le Bris of France makes the first flight that goes higher than his point of departure by having a horse pull him on a beach.

1869: John Wesley Powell leads an expedition down the Colorado River to map the Grand Canyon.

1872: The HMS Challenger circumnavigates the globe on a four-year voyage that discovers 4,417 new marine creatures.

1891: Otto Lilienthal of Germany is the first to successfully pilot gliders in flight.

1896: Samuel P. Langley of the United States flies a steam-powered model plane.

1900s

1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright of the United States make the first engine-powered, heavier-than-air flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The flight goes about 120 feet and lasts 12 seconds.

1906: Lewis Nixon invents the first sonar device to detect icebergs.

1921: the first flight to carry airmail crosses the United States.