By Nick Salacki
Towson University professor John M. Morgan, III, gave an overview of his career in geography and environmental planning Friday during a lecture in the school’s Liberal Arts building.
Morgan said he received his Bachelor’s in geography at what was then called Towson State College just before he was drafted to serve in World War II, where he practiced his expertise in geography.
Photo by Nick Salacki
Morgan attended the Topographic Engineer Officer Course at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia. The 12-week course consisted of surveying, photogrammetry, cartography, map reproduction and terrain analysis.
Later, Morgan said he was assigned to the 656th Engineer Battalion in Schwetzingen, Germany, where he worked with the Geographic Division and was involved in processing classified military intelligence documentation.
After serving in Europe, Morgan came back to the U.S. and began his Master’s at Towson State. During that period, he said he developed a computer-assisted choropleth mapping program, which included a themed map in which areas were shaded in proportion to a certain statistical measurement.
“I used a deck of punched cards in the program, with specific encoded district records,” Morgan said. “This data and job control language instructions were used to create my maps.”
Morgan said that even though the technology he used back then may seem low-end today, it was considered state-of-the-art.
Morgan said he received his Master’s and was hired by the Maryland Department of Planning as the first systems analyst/programmer for the state’s Automated Geographic Information System (MAGI).
During what Morgan identified as the geospatial revolution of the mid-1970s, paper maps were still the primary medium for sharing geospatial data. But during this time, the MAGI system was still progressing in its development, he said.
Morgan said a software company had recently released its Application Programming Interfaces, or API, to the public so other software developers can design products powered by its service.
“Now, in our current world of Web Map Services [WMS], a simple http browser interface for requesting geo-registered map images from various databases is easier than ever,” Morgan said.
Today, Morgan said he has been at work formatting his own WMS, using such statistical data as hospital bed vacancies for mass amounts of casualties, Baltimore County crime rates, and highway and local traffic.