Detail map of London, England, United Kingdom Overview map of London, England, United Kingdom

A: London, England, United Kingdom

OpenStreetMap Begins

2004

Inspired by the success of the Wikipedia (which began in 2001), in 2004 Steve Coast, then a computer science student at the University of London, created OpenStreetMap.org as a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. "Cartography-obsessed," Coast liked to bicycle around town with a GPS taped to his handlebars and a laptop recording its data in his backpack. Bolstered by the availability of map information and cheap GPS devices, OpenStreetMap (O.S.M) has since grown into a collaboration among some 300,000 map enthusiasts around the world. Anyone can contribute to it and use it free of charge.

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