Orthodox histories of GIS, such as Foresman (1998), have missed much primarily because they begin somewhere in the middle of the story. The first step to a more robust and thorough understanding of the origins of GIS and its complex heritage is to situate the discipline in its longer and larger context. Eight major stages in GIS history can be described:
One. Explicit procedures were devised and standardized to perform systematic analysis of co-registered thematic map overlays produced on translucent media. These technologies and practices developed, not as disembodied techniques, but as tools deeply imbedded in regional planning initiatives within specific national-level social structures addressed to social and environmental change. Pre-WWII examples include regional planning analysis by the TVA in the US.
The war, and preparations for war, created substantial opportunities for regional scale planning. The impact on geographic information science was difficult and troubling. In Germany, the Nazis funded Walter Christaller's development of central place theory for specific application to "rational" planning for regional assessment research applied to the diabolical purposes of Aryan colonization in captured territories to the east of Germany, as a part of the GeneralPlan for the East (Rossler, 1989, 1990).
The Cold War began even before the end of the Second World War, in the systematic dismantling of German science and technology by the western allies on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and its allies on the other. German geographic and photogrammetric equipment, as well as map series and geodetic data, were particular targets. Signal American geographic intelligence efforts were lead by Major Floyd Hough and his "Hough Team" of cartographic and geodetic specialists and translators (Hough, n.d.). Among the 250 tons of materials of many kinds that they uncovered were sets of extremely sophisticated thematic map overlays on translucent media possessed by only certain elements of the SS planning staff (Ayers, 1998, Clarke and Cloud, 2000). The map overlays had been classified secret by the Nazis, and remained secret to the Allies. However, Army intelligence forces characterized the materials using pre-established terms, calling them "military geographic information", or MGI. The sophistication of the map overlay system was acknowledged as an MGIS-the fuller history of GIS is not, then, a story of "where" GIS came from, but rather how the "M" in MGIS eventually disappeared.
In the immediate postwar period, the first explicit descriptions of techniques for systematic analysis of co-registered thematic map overlays in English were written by the brilliant British planner Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, who presented the techniques for explicit application to the implementation of the New Towns Act of 1947 (Tyrwhitt, 1950). That Tyrwhitt was the very first person (in English) to describe the techniques has long been acknowledged (Steinitz, et al, 1976), making her in some sense the "mother of GIS". It is altogether striking that in subsequent decades, Tyrwhitt and her contributions literally vanish from the story of GIS.
Two. There occurred a rapid and complex postwar evolution of analog and digital computation, followed by major developments in computation oriented to graphics and display. On both sides of the Cold War, these efforts originated in massive initiatives oriented to strategic defensive systems, such as the US' SAGE and Whirlwind computer systems (Edwards, 1996), but the very size of the systems suffused their impact throughout other computer initiatives and practices.
Three. The complex processes by which analog maps and geo-referenced data of many kinds were converted to digital equivalents occurred in the middle of a profound transition in geodesy, in which on both sides the Figure of the Earth was successfully determined to the tolerances necessary to both wage and prevent nuclear war (Cloud, 2000B). The technologies successfully developed to accomplish this task have become so pervasive they have rendered their triumph ubiquitous, and hence invisible. It is, therefore, little realized by most people, including most geographers, that the creation of the World Geodetic System was one of the key intellectual achievements of the Cold War.
Four. Global geo-referenced remote sensing databases and digital cartography began with top secret aerial and spaceborne reconnaissance programs, coupled to highly classified mapping programs within massive military and intelligence organizations, organized by complex procedures for both using and concealing Military Geographic Information (MGI). Over time, elaborate mechanisms were devised to convey portions of the core technologies and primary data systems and data products to less-highly classified and even unclassified civilian applications, by methods so elaborate and thorough that the standard histories of the latter systems remain confounded to the present day (Cloud, 2000A).
Five. The early implementations of these transferred systems, such as large publicly acknowledged geo-referenced databases, and also pioneering digital algorithmic implementation of both traditional and novel cartographic processes, then became the origins of GIS in the standard canon, in which GIS "begins" with the Canadian Geographic Information System and algorithm development in the Harvard University Laboratory for Computer Graphics (funded by the Office of Naval Research).
Six. Lucrative and even monopolistic contracts for GIS development, application, and diffusion, beginning with classified projects but soon spreading to unclassified government contracting and also to major extractive industries, contributed to a corporatization of GIS systems, practices, and personnel, with far-reaching effects on GIS development and on academic implementations of GIS systems. ESRI (originally Environmental Systems Research Institute) and the Intergraph Corporation eventually came to dominate GIS systems and their applications.
Seven. The widespread difusion of of GIS systems and practicioners, often featuring rather uncritical implementations, coupled to problematic GIS applications, both those immediately understood and also others only subsequently recognized, led to a variety of critiques of GIS, both conceptually and in practice. These critiques have varied widely, both in issues, substance, and even familiarity with GIS in both theory and application.
Eight. The more or less "official" histories of GIS have been crafted during the era of the major critiques, and within this arena of contestation, which has exerted important influence on the histories. Newer concepts, such as PPGIS, have developed from attempts to resolve the conflicts, or at least advance the discussion in productive directions, by essentially "reinventing GIS", with a focus almost entirely directed towards future implementations of GIS.
The productive possibilities of re-situating GIS in the much longer, more complex, far darker, and altogether more interesting histories it actually possesses have been relatively little explored. It is suggested that the key to productive GIS development in the future will be broad-scale systematic explorations of the many facets of GIS histories in the past.
REFERENCES
Ayers, L. A., 1998. Interviewed at Springfield, Virginia, October 29, 1998.
Clarke, K. C, and J. Cloud, 2000 (in press). "On the origins of analytical cartography," Cartography and Geographic Information Science.
Cloud, J., 2000A. "Through a shutter darkly: the tangled relationships between civilian, military, and intelligence remote sensing in the early U.S. space program," in Reppy, J. (ed) Secrecy and Knowledge Production. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Peace Studies Program.
Cloud, J., 2000B (in press). "Crossing the Olentangy River: the Figure of the Earth and the Military-Industrial-Academic-Complex,", Studies in History and Philosophy of Physics, special geophysics issue.
Edwards, P.N., 1996. The closed world: computers and the politics of discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Foresman, T.W. (ed), 1998. The history of geographic information systems: perspectives form the pioneers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR.
Hough, W.F., n.d. The surviving files of the Hough Team are archived in Record Group RG 77.11, Office of the Chief of Engineers, in the Cartographic and Architectural Records Branch, the National Archives at College Park, Maryland (NARA II).
Rossler, M., 1989. "Applied geography and area research in Nazi society: central place theory and planning, 1933 to 1945", Environment and Planning D: Soceity and Space, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 419-431.
Rossler, M, 1990. Wissenschaft und Lebensraum: Geographische Ostforschung im Nationalsozialismus. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin .
Steinitz, C.P., and L. Jordan, 1976. "Hand-drawn overlays: their history and prospective uses," Landscape Architecture, vol. 66, no. 5, pp. 444-455.
Tyrwhitt, J., 1950. "Surveys for Planning," Town and Country Planning Textbook, edited by APRR. London: The Architectural Press, pp. 146-196.