 |
Connected Now Asks
What if Columbus had Mapquest?
By Chip Cullen
Staff Writer, Connected Now, Inc.
 Anyone
who’s been through grade school can tell you that Christopher
Columbus set sail for the Indies in 1492, only to stumble
upon the New World. Though he was far from the first
European to reach North America (that being the Vikings),
his voyage marked the starting point of the permanent
migration of people westward. It is not disputed that
he made the trip, but how he navigated his way is debated
even to this day.
What would have happened if Columbus had the Internet
in his time? Would he have gone to MapQuest.com® to
print out directions? Many people today use MapQuest®
when they are going somewhere and they don’t know how
to get there.
What would his directions look like? I think it would
probably have been pretty simple: Merge onto Atlantic
Ocean, head WEST. We took the liberty and with permission
from MapQuest®, formulated how we think his directions
would have printed out. Being the cartographer, illustrator
and all around Master of Graphics, I think it went something
like this illustration to the right.
The real methods he used to navigate across the ocean
are still contested by scholars and history buffs. Some
say that he used celestial navigation. This is where
one tracks their movements by observing the positions
of the stars at night. If one knew the latitude of a
certain star, and it was directly overhead, then one
knew their latitude.
On his first voyage, Columbus was most likely to have
used dead reckoning to navigate across the ocean. Dead
reckoning is an older form of navigation that Columbus
was more familiar with, though he did experiment with
celestial methods.
Dead reckoning is where one starts at a known point,
such as a port. Then the movement of the ship is tracked
on a chart. Regular measurements of direction (with
a compass) and speed were made. If one knew that the
ship was heading west for eight hours at four miles
an hour, then the ship could be charted as having traveled
32 miles west.
In this age of the Internet, navigation is much easier.
We just need to know where we are starting and the address
of the place we’re going. Mapquest® can fill in the
rest. Odds are, one won’t run into a new continent on
the way.
To find your local directions, we recommend MapQuest.com®.
Tell all your friends so you don’t have to waste half
of your vacation going places you didn’t even know existed.
Happy Columbus Day!
The MapQuest.com logo is a registered trademark of MapQuest.com, Inc. The MapQuest trademarks and website look and feel are used with permission.
You may contact Chip Cullen at
CCullen@connectednow.com or call him at 916-857-1900. Ask for the master of Graphics.
|
|
