The first tries of getting the processing of data automatic happened on England and in the United States on the 50 decade, with the propose of reducing the costs of production and maintenance of maps.

The first GIS (Geographic Information System) arose in the decade of 60 on Canada like a part of a governmental program to create an inventory of natural resources.

On these years the capacity of storage and process a large group of information was very low. On the decade of 70 was developed news e more accessible hardware resources, becoming more viable the development of new commercial systems. Was on this decade that appeared the system CAD (Computer Aided Design) that put a better condition to the production of drawings and engineering plants. And also on this decade was developed many mathematics grounds for the cartographic area including geometry computational.

On the decade of 80 was when the technology of GIS (Geographic Information System) begun a time of growing that it’s happening on the actual days. Today we have many satellites around the globe that can take images of high resolutions of the ground. And with this technology and the news programs and computers we can process this information very fast on issues of hours or days. We can also associate a high resolution image with the geodesy system that can give us a high precision of a point on the image. And with that we can make many services like define with precision a limit of a farm or make a map of slope of a certain area.

These days we can see a use of this kind of technology on the GOOGLE EARTH or GOOGLE MAPS that show to us images of the globe. For example we can see many cities like “New York” or other city with a high resolution image with maps that give us the names of the streets or where is the closest hospital from where you are.

This are some of the use of this new technology that has a lot to grown on researches like on the area of geology, planning the growth of a city, controlling fire on forest areas and on this days environmental areas.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a technology developed by the department of defense of the United States, that was liberated to the civilians by the president Ronald Reagen in 1980, his origins in 1972 with the project NAVSTAR. The GPS has more than 24 satellites that are around the globe and use a technology that gives a precise location of a person that has and GPS receiver on earth. This system works 24 hours per day.

Applications for the GPS are almost unlimited. Some are basic like the GPS receiver for the car that shows to you the location and to where do you want to go. You have just to program the location that you want to go. It’s used on airplanes to know the exact location of the plain, on the ships too.