Is Thomas Guide Still in Business

In the growth phase of the early 1990s, the company was a leader and did a lot of new innovative things in the card industry. They were the first mapping company to establish a mapping foundation that trained teachers in geography and interesting map lessons, and donated mapping materials to schools in the area. They were also the first map editor to set up a computerized map database where sections could be extracted by cartographers, updated, and then reintegrated into a live digital map library with timestamps to keep track of what was being edited. They also solved many software digital mapping problems that other companies still use today. And they were the first mapping company to set up a digital map page and raster search system for the entire world. Many long-time TBM card users can still recite which side and grid they live on, even though they stopped using the notebooks years ago. [ref. needed] Even though Thomas Bros. maps have made strides in the digital landscape and even sold their guides via CDs, the rise of digital map sites has been a game changer for physical cartographers. At the same time, in the 90s, the Thomas Company made an unsuccessful foray into the East Coast. When I got my license in 1998, that was the only option.

LA was especially challenging because so many roads start and end on the map. I always use Google Maps passively and find the step-by-step instructions a bit distracting. I might get one out of nostalgia. « Private car owners now represent a very small part of our business, » he said. But California law states that every police officer and firefighter must have a Thomas guide on board. Fire corridors are often not on the GPS and ambulances cannot get lost, as any second could save lives. They often buy laminated copies because that`s how they get beaten. A variety of products were manufactured for sales planning, shipping, routing, real estate listings and land allocations. In addition to regular annual street atlases, they also produced wall maps, postal code guides, rock product areas and census tract numbers. [7] He said it has since been bought and sold by venture capitalists. Some versions of the Thomas Guide can still be purchased, but for the most part they have disappeared from the prominence. Thomas Guide is a series of pocket atlases with detailed maps of several major metropolitan areas in the United States, including Boise, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Oakland, Phoenix, Portland, Reno-Tahoe, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, Tucson, and Baltimore-Washington.

Road Atlas titles include Arizona, including Las Vegas, California, including parts of Nevada and the Pacific Northwest for Washington, Oregon, western Idaho, and southwestern British Columbia. Map books are usually organized by county; For example, separate Thomas guides have been published for Los Angeles County and San Diego County. There are also guides that have two or three counties together (e.g., Los Angeles and Orange County), or guides that cover a metropolitan area (such as the San Francisco Bay Area). Each guide has a detailed index of routes and points of interest, as well as abandonment maps to make it easier to locate pages. In 1940, the company moved its headquarters to Los Angeles. The company had grown to publish road maps of cities in several western states; These cards were sold in fold-out card covers. By the late 1940s, the company had added pocket guides for California and the city of San Francisco that included fold-out maps on the inner back. The first street guides, originally paperbacks, also appeared at this time and were deployed for several counties in California and one in Washington. [1] Thomas Guide atlases are sometimes called Thomas Brothers (for Thomas Bros. Maps). However, « Thomas Guides » are so widely used in Southern California that governments, businesses, individuals, and even emergency organizations are often linked to a « Thomas Guide » page number and map grid to indicate a location.

[6] So what happened to the Thomas brothers and the guide company that bears their name? And how important was the guide to Los Angeles? Explore. Companies often use Thomas Guide large wall maps. A common use of wall cards is for delivery companies, such as a local pizzeria. In addition, customized versions of guides and wall maps are created for businesses and governments, including items such as census districts, location of government facilities, watershed boundaries, and political boundaries. An updated Thomas guide for Los Angeles and Orange counties was released in 2021, three years after it was last updated. Larry Thomas, majority owner of the Thomas Maps brand, noted that California law requires police and fire trucks to carry Thomas guides and that the brand sells 1,000 to 1,500 guides per year. [5] Only the L.A./Orange County and San Diego/Imperial Counties guides are still in production today, but Thomas expects good sales. In 1940, the company moved to Los Angeles at 257 S. Spring St. Downtown, where it increased its inventory. Glen Creason, the downtown central library librarian who runs a collection of nearly 250 Thomas guides, said they originally made foldable maps that could fit in the pocket of a men`s bag from the `40s.

In 1945, they began the book format we still know today, sized to fit in a glove compartment. As sales of its most recent travel guides for Washington, D.C. and Virginia didn`t sell as expected and a lot of money was lost on the design of the online store, the company was heavily in debt. The company also intended to conquer the East Coast, but could not compete with existing cartographers. It was purchased by Rand McNally in 1999 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Rand McNally. [1] Do they still make the paper edition of Thomas Guide maps? Custom County Street Atlantes, made to order, features an entire county at street level in a convenient and easy-to-use product. Spiral. Atlas features include the latest subdivisions, a map of county roads, zip codes, block numbers, a comprehensive index, and handy map locators on each page. To order, call: 210-650-5099/855-415-4400 or email thomasmaps@hotmail.com The Central Library of L.A. has the only known complete collection of ring-bound rectangular guides.

Glen Creason, a recently retired map librarian, recalled how the library offered free photocopies of Hollywood and downtown pages because they were so often ripped off by cheap (or perhaps lost) motorists. Los Angeles is bigger than most cities, he said. When automobiles entered mass production, it was the Automobile Club of Southern California, not the government, that installed the first road signs, but a complete map was still needed to make the city navigable. That`s where Thomas Guides came in. After all spring and ink diagrams were converted and completed to digital format in the mid-1990s, map data became an important part of TBM companies` turnover. [1] The company had major data contracts with the California Highway Patrol, major utility companies, and many cities and counties in the 1990s. Thomas Brothers` map database had a monopoly in the 1990s because it contained the best mailing address indexes, making it very good for address matching for businesses. For those with a paywall, the reason the company is still there: « Only a normal guy could go to the Angeles National Forest or Venice, » Creason said.

« The street guides opened the city to the common man. » After January 2004, many important things in the guides were cut to save money. The rated interest points index[clarification needed] has no longer been updated. Thinner and cheaper paper was used in the map guides. The Irvine Sources service has been closed and no customer corrections have been made or recorded. Many guides were no longer printed annually. The name of the book was changed to Thomas Guide and the colors were changed to match Rand McNally`s colors and product lines. The popular card store was closed in the Irvine building, which was the last TBM store to close because years earlier they had closed those in San Francisco, downtown Los Angeles and the South Coast Plaza Mall. Map guides are still on sale, but the famous digital map database is now obsolete. Rand McNally now purchases its map data and updates from major digital map data companies such as Tele Atlas and Navteq. They overlay the new roads in their old database for publication. I don`t know any movies, but I still have my Thomas Guide pic.twitter.com/21EaQHOEpE Despite its huge database, the Thomas Guide stumbled in the digital age, and owner Rand McNally replaced cartographers and cut costs. The leaders seemed destined to lose themselves in nostalgia, but they have not disappeared.

thomasbrothersguides.com/ 2021 Riverside/San Bernardino combo is available now. In 1955, George Coupland Thomas died without heirs, leaving the company to his widow. At this point, the company was bought by his attorney Warren Wilson and his business partner. Thomas Bros. Maps, the publisher of the Thomas Guide, formerly known as the Popular Street Atlas, Street Guide, and Popular Atlas, was founded in 1915 in Oakland, California, by cartographer George Coupland Thomas and his two brothers who were business partners.