Early GIS Innovators: Dr. Vincent Malmstrom
Last weekend (Feb 1, 2009), I was rummaging through a box of old documents I collected during my university and graduate school days. A document titled, “People and Places: A New Approach in Geography” immediately caught my attention. Written by Dr. Vincent Malmstrom[1] while at Middlebury College and published by Dartmouth in 1973, this document represents a little known milestone in the evolution of the geospatial industry. It is the subtitle that is a key to the importance of the work by Dr. Malmstrom: COMPUTe – Computer Oriented Materials Production for Undergraduate Teaching[2]. Funded by the NSF, even this subtitle does not accurately reflect the innovations incorporated in this document:
This document may be the first distance learning curriculum in geography and computer mapping ever published and used;
The distance learning is performed using a number of interactive (not batch!) applications including several for mapping. This may be the first ever use of interactive computer mapping in student curricula;
In the mid 1960’s Dr. Malmstrom began using computers to develop and use interactive programs as a research tool for climatic classification. This work is incorporated into several of the computer exercises;
His passion and vision for using computers in geography “hooked” me (and others) on computer mapping and later GIS.
The document contains 23 computer-based exercises. These exercises range from computer measurement of distance and direction, to spatial interaction of trade areas, to climate change analysis, to voting pattern analysis. The manual also included a grid on clear accetate that could be used to manually “digitize” map data!
While his work in computer learning for geography was published in 1973, his thinking and work on this project began much earlier. I first learned of his interest in this project in 1969 when I walked into Dr. Malmstrom’s office for an advisor-student meeting. I had just selected Geography as my major and he was my new advisor. We talked about what I expected from the Geography program. Somehow, our conversation turned to a project he was completing: using computers as part of his research into climatic classification systems[3]. At that time, Middlebury had terminals (300 baud teletypes) linked to the Dartmouth timeshare system, a General Electric GE-225 mainframe installed in 1964[4] and upgraded to a GE 635 in 1969. In 1968 and 1969, he learned interactive BASIC and developed computer based applications in support of his research. This research project led him to believe that computers could be an integral component of the education experience in geography. Intrigued, I asked to get an account. He showed me how to log-in, how to access the BASIC programming tutorials, and so forth. This is how I started in GIS.
"to the victor belong the spoils.", a phrase we have all heard. To often, the written history of GIS as presented in books and GIS classes is incredibly thin and focused on just a few organizations, software systems, and individuals. What we loose in these histories are the incredibly rich contributions in the 1960s and 1970s by so many early GIS innovators. Dr. Malmstrom is definitely one of these innovators!
[1] Currently Professor Emeritus of Geography - Dartmouth College
[2] Project COMPUTe began as a three-year effort in 1971 to support "writing and publication of course materials that would support educational use of computing in the undergraduate curriculum." Thomas E. Kurtz was the principal investigator and Professor Arthur Luehrmann was the project director.
[3] A New Approach To The Classification Of Climate, THE JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY, Vol. LXVIII, No. 6, September 1969.
[4] In 1964, John G. Kemeny and Professor Thomas Kurtz created the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, one of the first time-share computer systems in the United States; then they created BASIC computer language so students could write programs to run on the that was the heart of the system.