Paper Maps: Amid GPS Boom, Nostalgia Finds a Place

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By Business Week | 03 July 2012 | 169

Used to be, Dad would stuff a half-dozen maps in the glove box before setting out with the family on a road trip to see the waterfalls at Yosemite or the granite faces of Mount Rushmore. Colorful maps bearing the logos of the oil companies that printed them — names like Texaco, Gulf, Esso — once brimmed from displays at filling stations, free for the taking. But of the more than 35 million Americans expected to travel by car this Fourth of July, a good chunk will probably reach for technology before they're tempted to unfold — and in a tradition that used to bind Americans as tightly as a highway cloverleaf, try to refold — a paper road map. Read More