"charles" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Peter Johnson used his keyboard to write :
I spent 30 years in fire service communications and would have no
difficulty with that. Inputting locations using grid references was
never considered for the two systems I was involved with and I suspect
that the cost of putting in place a system that could accept them
would have been expensive and rarely used.

So how were locations outside a built-up area identified? When did people
begin to use postcodes as a means of identifying a place on a map in
addition to a postal delivery address. "Between Town 1 and Town 2" could be
a long stretch of road, and it would be difficult to identify even if
someone read distances off a road sign "Town 1 = 10 miles, Town 2 = 4 miles"
if there were very twisty roads.


A paper OS map would have been comparatively cheap and shows much more
detail than Google does.

and how many would you need to access and how long would a paper map last?

Given that we're talking about Google maps, we're in the era of online OS
maps as well.

Even before that, I'd expect an emergency control room to have all the paper
OS maps, maybe unfolded, laminated and mounted on boards for extra
durability, for the area that they cover. (*)

I wouldn't regard Google maps as being up to the job of identifying
locations given over the phone, because they lack landmarks such as
churches, rivers/streams, woodland etc which people might use when
specifying a location ("It's near Anytown church, on the road that goes to
Anyvillage, just before you get to the stream. Also, Google maps don't have
OS grid references printed on them and the search doesn't understand grid
references.

Nowadays I'd expect emergency operators to be able to process all location
formats: OS grid ref (both all-numeric, and with initial two letter to
define the 100x100 km square), lat/long (DDMMSS and DDMM.MMM), postcodes.
And maybe things like Three Little Words. And then they should to display
that location on an OS map at a suitable scale (1:50,000 and 1:25,000, and
maybe 1:10,000 and larger scale in towns, to identify buildings as in "it's
near Jones the Butchers").


(*) I remember even in the early 1970s my dad bought several unfolded OS
maps of the area where we lived, and he cut them so they joined, and mounted
them on a large sheet of chipboard on the wall of his office at home. Not
sure why, because he didn't need them for his job, so maybe it was more for
interest.