Mention the AAA TripTik to anyone old enough to remember using one and there’s a gush of nostalgia for a simpler time. But the TripTik presaged GPS in a way paper road maps did not. You went to the local AAA branch, where an agent would sit with you and lay out your road trip, assembling narrow strips of map into a spiral-bound flipbook that you followed on a preordained path, with rest stops, restaurants, and motels noted. The agent would use a highlighter to mark the route. It was inexpressibly charming in retrospect.

It was also a single, authoritative voice telling you where to go. In the early and mid-20th century, AAA employed Pathfinders whose job was to physically measure roads, document construction, and note conditions. Their results were printed on cards that became the TripTiks. It was human-scaled work: identifying obstacles at ground level, knowing the roads so drivers didn’t have to. Today that’s all done invisibly, by satellites in orbit. What was human then is an algorithm now.

There was a cost to the convenience the TripTik pioneered, a cost to outsourcing navigation. What is GPS but an electronic TripTik? Research has shown a correlation between using GPS and reduced spatial memory in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that handles direction and memory. Looking at a map—which we are still free to do—requires that we do spatial navigation in our heads. It requires that we be the Pathfinder.

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Special thanks to Julie Kinzelman for suggesting the AAA TripTik.

Links:

• Did You Know? Paper Maps and AAA TripTiks Are Still Here - Rebecca Melnitsky, AAA, August 12, 2024

  
  

• “7 Reasons You Should Still Keep a Paper Map in Your Glovebox” – Brett and Kate McCay, Art of Manliness, July 25, 2021

  
  

• “Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation” - Louisa Dahmani & Véronique D. Bohbot, Nature, April 14, 2020

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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