But just 60 years ago the same routine would take a competent topographer or mathematician hours to calculate by hand and would involve the use of special forms, books full of mathematical tables, slide rules and, if he or she was lucky, a hand cranked mechanical calculating machine that might be able to hold precision to a decimal place or two. A mouse click or two in a multi-threaded 64-bit desktop application launches a routine that returns a mathematical solution in seconds. Today all of the complex math involved in map making is easily and swiftly handled by computers. A competent topographer needed to be conversant in everything from plane geometry to matrix algebra to calculus. This means number crunching, lots and lots of number crunching. This all has to be figured out before the first line is drawn. Before those squiggly lines get drawn there first must be a determination of things like the geographic extent of the map, the scale, the coordinate system and projection and the precise location of key features on the map. Map making is far more than drawing squiggly lines on a sheet of paper. The topographic sciences are a math intensive endeavor.
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