Blue Marble Geographics
Blue Marble Geographics is a developer and provider of geographic information system software products focused on data translation. They provide software products and services for working with GIS data in different formats.
Blue Marble Geographics is a member of the Open Geospatial Consortium.
Products
Geographic Calculator
Blue Marble Geographics' first software product, Geographic Calculator, was developed in 1992 and released in 1993. The Geographic Calculator is a coordinate conversion library with a database of coordinate mathematical objects, including projections, coordinate systems, datums, ellipsoids, as well as linear and angular units. The tool is primarily used to translate map coordinates from one system to another. In 2004, the underlying GeoCalc library was rewritten, and in 2007, a new version was released as the Blue Marble Desktop.2013 saw a rebranding of the Blue Marble Desktop back to Geographic Calculator. Blue Marble Geographics incorporated all of the functionality of the Blue Marble Desktop, including the Geographic Transformer, Translator, and Spatial Connect products, into the new Geographic Calculator. This introduced an easier-to-follow annual naming convention with one or two service pack updates between releases.
Global Mapper
Global Mapper is a geographic information system software package currently developed by Blue Marble Geographics that runs on Microsoft Windows. Global Mapper handles both vector, raster, and elevation data, and provides viewing, conversion, and other general GIS features.In 1995, the USGS was in need of a Windows viewer for their data products, so they developed the dlgv32 application for viewing their DLG vector data products. Between 1995 and 1998, the dlgv32 application was expanded to include support for viewing other USGS data products, including DRG and DEM, and SDTS-DLG and SDTS-DEM data products. The development process is described in detail in the USGS paper titled 'A Programming Exercise'.
In 1998, the USGS released the source code for dlgv32 v3.7 to the public domain.
In 2001, the source code for dlgv32 was further developed by a private individual into the commercial product dlgv32 Pro v4.0 and offered for sale via the internet. Later that same year, the product was renamed to Global Mapper and became a commercial product of the company Global Mapper Software LLC. The USGS was distributing a version of the software under the name dlgv32 Pro.
Blue Marble Geographics acquired Global Mapper, LLC at the end of 2011. Mike Childs, the original developer of Global Mapper, continues to work for Blue Marble as a lead developer.
In 2013, Blue Marble released a major version update to Global Mapper that also introduced the new Global Mapper LiDAR Module. The Global Mapper LiDAR Module offers optional enhancements to the base Global Mapper application and provides numerous advanced LiDAR processing tools.