What Is Keyhole Mark-up Language (KML)?
In the beginning, there was XML. And it was good. Then came Keyhole Mark-up Language (KML). It was not only good but also better than XML. It was so good that it managed to take a boring, old-fashioned map and make it 3D-ish! And then it took over the world by becoming Google Earth. Google Earth became so popular that it was consolidated into Google in 2004. The name Keyhole had to be changed because it made no sense to have a company called Keyhole when there was already a product called "Google Earth". So, Keyhole became Google Earth, and now there are no more confusing naming issues in our lives! In the early 1970s, a company named Keyhole was founded by a group of scientists interested in developing satellite-based technology for military surveillance. They named their company after the satellites they worked on: Keyhole satellites. After successfully launching their first satellite in 1971, the team went on to work with the U.S. government to develop several successful military reconnaissance systems based on these Keyhole satellites—and it wasn't long before they had developed an image-processing system that would allow them to create maps from satellite photos and make them available online. In other words, one could now look at an aerial photograph of any location on Earth as if they were flying above it in an airplane or helicopter! The world of cameras is a big one. It's got a lot of data types, and they all have to be tracked and understood to be used. There are three main types of cameras heading, altitude and tilt. They're all important for understanding how the camera is positioned relative to Earth's surface and other kinds of spatial information but, what about when you want to share this information with someone else? How does that work? There are two options, KML and Geography Markup Language (GML). Both are XML-based markup languages used for describing geographical features. Nowadays, we all use Google Earth or similar services to view the images of our favorite places around the world—but we have Keyhole and its founder Dr. John Parmelee to thank for making all this possible!
Join Our Newsletter
Get weekly news, engaging articles, and career tips-all free!
By subscribing to our newsletter, you're cool with our terms and conditions and agree to our Privacy Policy.