6.3 Evolution of Military GIS and T

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ROY MULLEN: Early map preparation was all by foot.

WILLIAM A. RADLINSKI: You had to go and walk the land.

ALFRED O. QUINN: Well, I'd never heard of photogrammetry before.

MORRIS THOMPSON: What is a stereoplotting instrument?

ROY MULLEN: Oh, there were many things--

WILLIAM A. RADLINSKI: State-of-the-art cameras.

ROY MULLEN: Various multiplex systems.

ALFRED O. QUINN: The Fairchild system--

FREDERICK DOYLE: The Kelsh plotter projector photographed from a glass plate. We went from optical systems to mechanical systems.

MARILYN O'CUILINN: With every generation, the resolution got better and the geometric fidelity of the lenses got better.

WILLIAM A. RADLINSKI: We got into space imagery early on.

MARILYN O'CUILINN: There were the analytical stereoplotters.

ROY MULLEN: Computers came along as a tool for design.

MARILYN O'CUILINN: And then forward image motion compensation. We went to softcopy photogrammetry.

ROY MULLEN: And digital orthophotography.

MARILYN O'CUILINN: And then, of course, the digital cameras.

JACK DANGERMOND: This database wasn't about money or about people. It was about geographic information systems.

ROY MULLEN: Because of the ability to digitize directly, photogrammetry, as we knew it, reached its apex of evolution.

MARILYN O'CUILINN: 20 years ago, you would've seen monster pieces of metal.

WILLIAM A. RADLINSKI: In the world today, it's almost obsolete. Anybody can get a map just by turning on his computer and googling it.

ROY MULLEN: You put it into your GPS systems that use a base map. It's universally used throughout the world now.

MARILYN O'CUILINN: And the appetite for that sort of digital data is almost insatiable.

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JIM LIVING: Back in 1923, Talbert Abrams bought an airplane, and he was barnstorming. And he found out that people would pay him more to take pictures of their farms and buildings than they would to go for a ride in the airplane. It was people like him that started this whole industry.

MO WEINBERG: Map makers, topographers from the four different sections of the country would bring about a revolution in mapping

MORRIS THOMPSON: They were in an airplane, open cockpit, no shelter. After you get the aerial photos, what do you do with them?

MARILYN O'CUILINN: They saw the possibilities of mapping from the air.

WILLIAM A. RADLINSKI: Most of the farmers didn't know how many acres they had, so we would determine which acreage was tillable, and that was called "mapping."

ALFRED O. QUINN: I tried to get mathematics with Professor Earl Church, but the only course that I could get with him was one known as photogrammetry.

DON LAUER: I had a plan to play for the army all-star basketball team, but Bob had a vision. He convinced me to go to graduate school. Profound experience.

MORRIS THOMPSON: I only know of one person around here who would still remember so much detail. And he wasn't there when it began, and I was.

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MARILYN O'CUILINN: Photogrammetry started with the military.

MORRIS THOMPSON: We had a combined TVA-USGS force. When the war started in Europe, we got to wondering about who is next.

MO WEINBERG: Map making was turned over to the Army map service, so that we would map for them.

MORRIS THOMPSON: And where do you suppose we started? China, Japan. Where? Upstate New York.

VIRGINIA LONG: They thought the Germans would invade the United States by way of the Saint Lawrence Waterway.

MORRIS THOMPSON: But that's just the beginning.

WILLIAM A. RADLINSKI: We landed in Normandy and went all the way across Europe, going with the front line. We provided topographic maps for the infantry and to the artillery.

ALFRED O. QUINN: After Pearl Harbor, we computed targets for the Naval bombardment prior to an invasion, so that ships could fire at coordinates.

FREDERICK DOYLE: We made target charts and bomb damage assessment charts for the B29 raids on Japan.

MORRIS THOMPSON: I remember there was one place we were mapping, and then came the news that there's nothing left of it. We were mapping Hiroshima.

ALFRED O. QUINN: Without maps, we'd have been lost in WW II.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: I ask that the Congress declare a state of war.

ALFRED O. QUINN: A lot of our men, of course, were drafted. And so, we went recruiting young ladies.

GWENDOLYN GILL: Mr. Quinn asked if I was interested in the job. I accepted it immediately. I was real glad to get a job with TVA.

VIRGINIA LONG: I was fresh out of college when I was assigned to maps and surveys.

MARGARET DELAYNEY: We did parcels of property land somewhere. It was hush-hush, because we weren't supposed to know what this was.

LOUISE EDWARDS: But when you saw a map that you were compiling in the newspapers, you had a pretty good idea.

MORRIS THOMPSON: They took to it. They learned quickly. Their drafting was nicer than ours.

ALFRED O. QUINN: They had greater patience than most men. They were well-adapted to the photogrammetric equipment.

SID IZLAR: And I said, I'd love to get in the multiplex, because all these girls they were hiring were making more money than I was.

MARILYN O'CUILINN: In ASPRS, being a woman was not much of a barrier.

If you look around now at the USGS, and the civilian side, it's truly becoming one world and this is part of it.

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FREDRICK DOYLE: Nowadays, sophisticated programs are used to make the maps. It's not the challenge it was when I was working on it. We were making the maps of the moon. I was in charge of the cameras on the Apollo spacecraft. We established 14,000 points. We had used photographs from four different missions. It was an enormous job.

We made a whole series of maps for the ground crews-- what they would see at each station, digital maps and perspective views. A very fancy package.

JACK SCHMITT: Oh, shoot.

EUGENE CERNAN: Oh, you won't believe it.

FREDRICK DOYLE: But when they unloaded the roving vehicle, they broke one of the fenders.

EUGENE CERNAN: Oh, there goes a fender.

FREDRICK DOYLE: They decided to patch the fender.

HOUSTON: OK, we'll need to tape it.

FREDRICK DOYLE: They took our set of maps and duct tape.

EUGENE CERNAN: How do you want those things taped together?

HOUSTON: Allow about an inch of overlap, and tape both sides of them.

FREDRICK DOYLE: So they didn't use them at all on the terrain. When we got back, they said, well, those were the most valuable maps we had ever made.

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ROY MULLEN: There may be one map the saves an untold number of lives. It's intangible what value that is. But think about what was avoided by having had that map to begin with.

ALFRED O. QUINN: The use of digital map data in all kinds of investigations, plans, developments-- I think the whole thing is going to continue.

MARILYN O'CUILINN: It's very exciting to watch the progression, because it does touch so many aspects of our lives.

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