‘Data for Decision’: GIS on Punchcards

“Data for Decision” is a 1967 National Film Board of Canada film that explains the work of the Canada Geographic Information System — one of the earliest GISes in history, if not the earliest — in analysing the huge volumes of data from the Canada Land Inventory. It’s been uploaded to YouTube in three parts: part one is above; here are links to parts two and three. A dry documentary (today it would have been a PowerPoint presentation at a high-level bureaucratic meeting), but now it’s a fascinating look at GIS in the punchcard era.

For more on the Canada Land Inventory data featured in this film, see Peter Schut’s page on how CLI data was rescued and converted into modern data formats; it’s now available on GeoGratis.

Via Free Geography Tools.

Previously: Roger Tomlinson: The Father of GIS.

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