Groom Lake and the geography server

From: PaulMcG@aol.com
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 22:29:12 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Groom Lake and the geography server

For those who don't know about it, the University of Michigan has a geography
server that allows you to get the latitude and longitude for various places.
To connect to, you would use Telnet (a way of logging in as a remote text
terminal) and connect to port 3000 on their host. On a Unix system, you could
enter this command:
  telnet martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000
If your Web browser, such as Netscape is configured for an external Telnet
program, you could enter this URL:
  telnet://martini.eecs.umich.edu:3000

Groom Lake came up, but oddly enough, Rachel, NV did not. (The nearest
populated place that comes up is Alamo, NV). The geography server produced
this for Groom Lake:

0 Groom Lake
1 32017 Lincoln
2 NV Nevada
3 US United States
A 702
F 35 Lake
L 37 16 05 N 115 47 58 W
E 4437

Amazingly, their coordinates put you at the runway on the western edge of the
dry lake bed!!

The various fields in the database entry mean the following:
0 <city name>
1 <county FIPS code> <county name>
2 <state/province abbreviation> <state/province name>
3 <nation abbreviation> <nation name>
A <telephone area code>
E <elevation in feet above mean sea level>
F <feature code> <feature name>
L <latitude DD MM SS X> <longitude DDD MM SS X>
P <1980 census population>
R <remark>
T <time zone>
Z <postal ("ZIP") code>

Paul McGinnis / PaulMcG@aol.com
  http://www.frogi.org/secrecy.html  [military secrecy site]
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