I'm sure by now most of you have heard of or even played around with the new Google Maps Street View. If you've been reading Gadling for even a few months, you'll know that we gushed about the feature on numerous occasions. (1, 2, 3, 4)

It turns out that Google wasn't the first to develop this technology. (And no, I'm not talking about Amazon.com's A9 or whatever it was called.) Way back in 1907, before conventional road atlases were made, Rand McNally released "Photo Auto-maps" which gave drivers a visual pathway for navigation, much like the Google Maps Street View of today.

Cool! [via]

Filed under: History