It may be true that the Canada Geographic Information System was the first GIS. When Roger Tomlinson first described CGIS, it was at a conference on land evaluation held in Melbourne Australia. Why did he carry the message first to this audience? What were the directions of this group that were deflected and reoriented by the prospects of GIS? The same year, Samuel Arms presented a comparison of a few competing information systems, using Tomlinson's term as unproblematic. His audience was the sixth annual URISA meeting. If CGIS was first, what were they doing in those previous years?
This paper will describe the community into which CGIS emerged. I will follow Archimedes (and a few others) in saying that you cannot move the earth without having a place to stand. Being "first" is only something that is apparent in retrospect. It makes sense to remember a bit more about the pre-history of GIS, not just to get the history right, but to understand how the events of prior periods influence the way the technology develops. Current GIS may owe as much, or more, to the prior developments than it does to CGIS.
Tomlinson takes his paper to Australia
who listened?
Sam Arms comments on CGIS at 6th URISA
What does an "origin" mean?
Some models of change
(recycled from AUTO-CARTO 11)
Applying the models to Tomlinson and 1968
Watershed event? Unilinear progress?
Dialectic: by what oppositions?
Multi-threaded past: many stories