Schrodinger's town

From a Facebook share by friend Jay: An NPR story about a fake place name

This is the story of a totally made-up place that suddenly became real — and then, strangely, undid itself and became a fantasy again.

Not so much

Here, in a print ad from 1925, was Rand McNally, poised to take very lucrative advantage of America's new obsession with automobile travel.  Almost 100 years later Rand McNally is all but absent from the new GPS-driven consumer-directions driving scene.  What happened? 

This is from the AdClassix site which had hundreds of old print ads available for sale.

Rand McNally coasts

A print ad for Rand McNally "Auto Trail Maps" from 1922.  This ran well before the extensive well-developed road networks we take for granted today.  At 35 cents each, adjusting for inflation, that's about $4.50 today.  And far more comprehensive nation-wide maps come "free" with many smart phones today.  At some point comparing value on inflationary terms alone becomes meaningless.

The Fuzzy Way

Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley is the intelligent, innovative, engaging strip that Garfield can never be. Same basic cast of characters, deeper content.

This episode's fantastic Rand McNally reference was custom-built for this blog.

Family dinner

A Rand McNally print advertisement from 1922 (from AdClassix.com). This one actually hits kind of close to home for me because when I was smaller there was always a world map on the wall in the dining room (though ours was National Geographic, not Rand McNally) and we were always having discuassions about world events and politics and so forth.  So I've been on a ton of the sort of family dinner world travel junkets being promoted in this ad.

Click on the picture to enlarge it enough to read the copy.

Random McNally

"Close to home" by John McPherson. The irony is pretty intense. Rand McNally does seem to have lost out to the likes of Google, Mapquest, and Microsoft in the modern revolution in consumer-grade mapping. But they're still in that that game... though they're making a bigger play in the trucking navigation business... making this comic even more poignant.

Rand McNally's world

Yesterday I posted a link from Tanya about a classic '50's edicational film about map making. Today I'm posting an even older item, a Rand McNally print advertisement from 1922 (from AdClassix.com). This of course references that flat earth myth I mentioned last week.