Microsoft Research Maps (MSR Maps) was a free online repository of

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

aerial imagery Aerial photography (or airborne imagery) is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other airborne platforms. When taking motion pictures, it is also known as aerial videography. Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wing aircra ...

and

topographic map In modern mapping, a topographic map or topographic sheet is a type of map characterized by large- scale detail and quantitative representation of relief features, usually using contour lines (connecting points of equal elevation), but historic ...

s provided by the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

(USGS). The site was a collaboration between

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

(MSR), Bing Maps, and the USGS. It was in operation from June 1998 to March 2016. It had 30,000 to 50,000 visitors per day as of January 2010. The site was renamed in 2010, prior to which it had been known as TerraServer-USANew Web Site Name
. Microsoft Research Maps. January 30, 2010. (formerly Microsoft TerraServer). The site had black and white USGS aerial photographs of approximately 97% of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. In 2000, the USGS launched the new Urban Areas program, which will ultimately take high-resolution color aerial photographs of about 100 major American cities. MSR Maps had Urban Areas data for 40 cities. Microsoft had announced that the MSR Maps web site was going to permanently close on May 1, 2012, but later changed that decision based on requests from users of the site. As of March 2016 the site is no longer available.

History

Though it was online as early as December 1997, the site was formally unveiled June 24, 1998, as part of an 18-month agreement between

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

, and Aerial Images of

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats, seat of Wake County, North Carolina, Wake County in the United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most ...

. It was created as a demonstration system to advertise the scalability of Microsoft's

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

Server and SQL Server, and used images from the

(USGS) and Sovinformsputnik (the

Russian Federal Space Agency The State Space Corporation "Roscosmos" (russian: Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»), commonly known simply as Roscosmos (russian: Роскосмос) ...

). TerraServer was the brainchild of the Turing Award-winning researcher on database systems, Jim Gray. Before his death, Gray continued this work, developing Microsoft Virtual Earth and began a similar project that would become the

Worldwide Telescope WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is an open-source set of applications, data and cloud services, originally created by Microsoft Research but now an open source project hosted on GitHub. The .NET Foundation holds the copyright and the project is manage ...

. In January 2000, Microsoft and Aerial Images, now TerraServer.com, Inc., split their operations, creating two parallel TerraServer websites. The dualism caused confusion among web surfers until the Microsoft name change in 2010. TerraServer.com, Inc., which owns the trademark TERRASERVER, filed a lawsuitMicrosoft Satellite Map Project Sued Over Name
. ''PC World''. May 7, 2008. in 2008 in North Carolina federal court, seeking monetary damages and asking that Microsoft be stopped from using the TerraServer trademark. The TerraServer name was a play on words, with ''Terra'' referring to the 'earth' or 'land' and also to the

terabytes The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

of images stored on the site.

References

{{reflist, 30em

External links

MSRMaps.com
Aerial photography Microsoft Bing Geographical technology Microsoft Research Microsoft websites Public domain databases Web Map Services

History

See also

References

External links