Imagine: it’s 1866, and you’ve just hopped on a steamboat heading up the Mississippi River. Excited, you pull out your newest souvenir, a small spool with a strip of linen-backed parchment twisted around it. You begin unwinding, and see a near-future destination: Memphis, marked by a smart bullseye, and the site of a major railroad junction. You twirl it up again and travel back in time: There’s the Mississippi-Louisiana border, which you crossed just yesterday.
Suddenly, a stiff river breeze churns up, and you lose control of your map, which quickly unspools. The end of it gets caught by the wind and floats across the deck. Before you can say anything, whap!—it hits another eager tourist right in the face.
Such were the delights potentially provided by the Ribbon Map of the Father of Waters. A depiction of the entire Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to northern Minnesota, the map stretched 11 feet long and just under three inches wide, and was meant to be wrapped around a spool and carried in a pocket. Although it never really caught on, it stands as a testament to the many forms maps can take, and as a precursor of how we treat traveling today.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: 100 CircuitPython Community Libraries, a New Arduino UNO and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
