I’m 56 and I remember cross country road trips with my family and my dad would get the latest Rand McNally map of the US and the states were listed alphabetically so we always discussed how the printers had to account for that when they printed the front and back pages of each sheet! Then updating the new roads when you’re mass producing maps like that had to be a bitch! Reading the map was a grid and there was a legend to help you find places. God help you if your destination was somewhere in the crease of the book! 😂
I never thought about there being enough of a demand for map updates for printers to release them on a two-week basis, wow. In fact I haven't heard of detour maps at all, probably because they weren't commonplace where I live. I'm probably part of one of the last generations to have used printed maps for car navigation, yet detour maps are so out that I never came across them before.
What is crazy is that twenty years before this, you navigated across the country by asking directions, by pointer signs telling you (maybe) when each road went, and by asking directions. There were no interstates, there were barely highways, many of the major routes were just dirt roads, and they wound across the countryside, through every town. We didn't get ir major highways paved until the late 40s. The roads were narrow, winding two lanes just wide enough for two cars to fit. There are a few old sections still existing where they bypassed and shortened the road. So having actual maps showing every road and town was a big deal. And they had to update often because they were building and expanding roads at a rate you won't believe today, when it takes ten years just to do major repairs in an extant stretch of road. This was the start of the automobile boom.
Back as recently as 2003 or so, we went to the US and the only thing we used was a road atlas bought at Wal-Mart. That thing was amazingly precise. GPS are nice, but are often riddled with errors. And good luck finding something that isn't listed there. With an actual map, you can deduct what is where sometimes.
@@mverick5444 both eyes open which doesn't seem to be the case with most people nowadays and a road map also something that has passed, people don't often driving to lakes and oceans on roads that aren't there. In the military I applied it courses where we didn't have a map available to us. He's always nice to have a map even a person needs to learn to read it and not just listen to the GPS turn right here. But then I've ever had satellite for used to draw up the maps. You ever think about The faulty human input put in by people who don't care as much about their jobs with the information you get from GPS? Sometime it's nice to have somebody who's anal about their job because they work to get it right. I've traveled 42 or so of the 50 states some more extensively than others. I will use Google maps but there's been many times I went back to my old Walmart map Atlas book to figure out what Google's got it wrong. A little bit off of your comment but I don't know where Google sticks their head at some time. They will drive you through a neighborhood when there's a perfectly good route to bypass it. What to save 20 ft of driving and a half ounce of gasoline? Keep one of those Map books in your car and learn how to read them. If you drive any amount at all, they will be useful.
You are right! I driven tens of thousands of miles around this country using maps predominantly the one from Walmart. Truck stops and other places sell them to. Can I sing about the map is that it's almost always correct and you don't have to worry about losing signals way back in the forest or in the mountains and the GPS stopped working. Also with the map you can find out that dual maps make no sense sometimes and you can drive around the neighborhood you said driving through it. One person that replied to your comment by the name of Maverick obviously hasn't heard that much. One time we actually saw somebody drive right into the water. We stayed around until she was able to be rescued out. First thing I heard her say was I don't understand GPS told me to turn etc etc.. Hope you had fun and enjoyed driving around the country and saw some great sites because it plenty of things to see and a lot of good people to talk with.
My parents had a Rand-McNally GPS device. It was a yellow brick that plugged into a laptop and used special software to show a virtual road map on the screen, with a car shaped marker. I remember spending several hours updating the maps before road-trips. It was a PITA, and now all of that is updated in real-time on my phone.
I did this back in the 40’s. Every week, making a new F’ING map. It never stops my god HELP ME…..I have to make new makes every 6 hours now, MAPS MAPS MAPS……STOP IT……
I love finding old footage of highways and bridges being built, there is agreat documentary about the Alaskan highway construction, but I don't remember the name of it.
Tremendous film. How rugged were those cars. On another note, years ago I saw a wonderful Ford film about customer service - Put yourself in the customers’ shoes and it had a dealership who had a little pair of shoes as a keychain for their staff and customers to reinforce how they always wanted to put themselves in their customers’ shoes. It would be great if you can find that film. I haven’t seen it in 25 years.
@@frostedbvtts I think Chevrolet sponsored this film, as they were Jam Handy's biggest customer. Here's what they produced the following year for the training of salesmen...with a little help from the folks from MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aWIQuvbxu0E.html