I have a new dash cam for my car and it adds GPS information to the video footage. Problem is, that’s shown in some cryptic lat/long notation. How can I convert it to locations on a map?
Latitude and Longitude are the basis of all global map coordinates and has been around for more than 2000 years. In fact, it was around 300 BCE that Eratosthenes came up with the idea, though it was Hipparchus who first used the notation to uniquely specify places on Earth.
Latitude is a measurement of the distance north or south of the equator, with the North Pole being 90 degrees north, and the South Pole being, you guessed it, 90 degrees south. Longitude measures east and west. But east and west of what location? We can thank the English: The Prime Meridian goes from North Pole to South Pole directly through the British Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England.
Longitude is then a measure east or west of Greenwich and the meridian furthest from Greenwich is the International Date Line, exactly 180 degrees E or W.
Boulder City Hall, in Boulder, Nevada, by way of example, is at 35.9787 degrees North, 114.8337 degrees West. If you were reading an old pirate treasure map, you’d see the older notation of degrees, minutes, seconds, as in 41°24’12.2″ N 2°10’26.5″ E.
BUT HOW DO YOU MAP IT?
All well and good, but when your dashcam GPS records a location of 39.1911° N, 106.8175° W, where the heck are you?
Turns out all modern mapping programs know how to work with lat/long addresses, so identifying that location is as easy as typing it into Google Maps.
As another example, where is 39.1911° N, 106.8175° W? It’s the intersection of Main St & Mill St in Aspen, Colorado!
You can also identify the latitude and longitude of a location with Google Maps: Click to drop a “pin”, marking the spot, then right-click (or Control-click for Mac users) on that spot and choose “What’s Here?” from the resultant menu.
Using this technique, I can ascertain that Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles, a well-known landmark for MacOS X users, has the coordinates 33.338924, -118.329881.
Ah, but that’s a different notation! No worries, positive latitude is north of the Equator while negative latitude is south. Positive longitude is east of the Prime Meridian, negative longitude is west. So it’s 33.338924 N, 118.329881 W. Turns out that 33°20’20.1″N 118°19’47.6″W also identifies that spot in Avalon on Catalina, if you prefer degrees/minutes/seconds notation.
Now get to mapping those locations and figure out where the pirate treasure is buried!
Pro Tip: I’ve been decoding cryptic Internet information for quite a long time. Please check out my fascinating computer and tech basics library for hundreds of articles!
I have to assume you are familiar with the Baseline Road association and history. A quick Google map street view of the northeast corner of the Base-Mar Shopping Center between the KeyBank and the bus stop will show a split boulder and plaque aligned with the 40th parallel. Standing there, pointing it out to young kids, is a study in bewilderment, as even most adults have no real awareness or understanding about such arcane information. Thanks for bringing attention to old-fashioned technology via modern interfaces!