High-Flying Wayfinding
Imagine that you are the pilot of an open-cockpit biplane, flying from Reno to Elko with 300 pounds of mail. It is night in 1926 and you are relying on a recently installed innovation on the ground to keep on course over Nevada’s deserts and mountains. You have a strip map and compass and a railroad to follow in daylight. But at night these are useless. Instead of having the navigation equipment and air traffic control that keeps planes on course today, you follow a newly constructed route marked by orange concrete arrows embedded in the ground, each about 50 feet long and lit by beacons powered by acetylene gas or electricity. ... read more