iGage Mapping Corporation is a small engineering company in Salt Lake City, Utah. Founded in early 1996, iGage has traditionally provided electrical engineering design and software services for industrial and automation customers.

The word 'iGage' is a play ('Eye Gauge') on the machine vision, non-contact measurement devices that have traditionally provided our core products. The name was coined long before iEverything and eEverythingElse become popular. Over the years we have come to regret our trendy name, we are just boring engineers, but it has always appeared too difficult to change our name to something more descriptive like 'Light and Chemical Based Measurement Tools and Systems'.

iGage is responsible for many of the infrared absorption gas measurement devices that check automotive emissions; the gas analyzers for oxygen concentration measurement and calibration used in hospitals and industry; several lines of high speed laser based measurement tools for the non-contact measurement and control of wire, fiber and cable extrusion; motorized valve testing equipment; and lots of other nifty, but equally unexciting tools and devices.

In March 1998 Mark Silver, an iGage engineer, built a software tool that allowed him to view all the 7½ minute quadrangle maps in the North Eastern corner of Utah where he fishes and recreates. Mark paid his way through the University of Utah, fighting range fires for the Bureau of Land Management in Vernal Utah. He loves maps, and he has always dreamed of making a tool like All Topo Maps. Originally he called his hobby 'iTopo' and it intrigued everyone who saw it. He soon expanded it to cover all of Utah.

By August, Mark was literally burning up the iGage office CD-ROM burner making copies for his friends and their acquaintances. In October 1999, Mark decided to have a couple hundred copies made to give as Christmas gifts. He learned that it was about the same price to press 1,000 sets as it cost to burn 100 so he made a simple User's Manual and some cover art then had 1,000 sets pressed and assembled.

Mark spent several weeks giving maps sets away, pulling the front covers and autographing them as if he was a famous musician. Very quickly it became evident that he would not be able to give them away fast enough to satisfy everyone who wanted a copy so he convinced three local retailers (Denali, Utah Idaho Map World and the Utah Geological Survey store) to retail All Topo Maps.

When All Topo Maps were released, there was no competition and no comparable products to set a price against. Mark decided that $100 was a fair price that he would be willing to pay for the two-disk set. Within a couple of weeks the concept of a simple, reasonably priced consumer mapping tool was proven. Hundreds and hundreds of copies were quickly sold. The 1,000 original map sets barely made it through Christmas.

Selling maps is a lot more fun than building gas measurement systems, so iGage had a GPS interface tool written, improved the resolution and viewing software and released several new states (Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming.) Soon we had sold over 5,000 copies of All Topo Maps to consumers, and to our surprise other engineers. More states and nifty mapping tools like BigTopo have followed.

Topographical maps are the basis for almost everything that we do. Early maps guided exploration. Later maps formed the basis for land sales, plat maps and land ownership. The topographic map series is one of this nation's finest treasures, a resource of uncountable value. The series was paid for by citizens for their benefit, it should be available in a concise, friendly form for everyone to use at a reasonable price.

So, it is by accident that iGage has fallen into the role of providing digital mapping solutions. At the time of this writing we have served millions and millions and millions of maps, hopefully our products provide extreme value, and simple to use map gratification for the map needy and the truly map obsessed.

We are not a big outfit, so your comments and suggestions do make a difference! Don't hesitate to drop us a note if your have a great idea or hate our guts and want to let us know about it. You will get a quick response by contacting info@igage.com