Navigating Before Road Maps | The Tools of the Trade

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Before Google Maps, GPS devices and MapQuest, we had road maps, but what did we have before road maps?

Journey back in time as Charlie discusses how we navigated the roads before the maps and technology of today existed.

Blue Books were books of sets of strip maps with specific routes and written instructions of how to get from one specific town or city to another.

Before that even, starting at around 1905 H. Sargent Michaels created the Photo Auto Guide and eventually sold the rights to Rand McNally. So in the early aughts Rand McNally published a series of early photo guides. They showed photographs with directions and arrows drawn on them to guide the traveler from one specific city to another. They are scarce these days. You usually have to go to a library to see one.

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