While Steinitz’s foundational work was, and still is, technology independent, much of what he and his students were doing at Harvard was supplemented by the work that was going on at the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, also at Harvard. Howard Fisher (1903–1979) founded the Laboratory for Computer Graphics in 1965, which later became more broadly known as the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis.
Fisher developed the SYMAP program, which was one of the first computer mapping programs to become widely popular with planners.
The lab he founded became responsible for the further development of SYMAP, which predated and ultimately led to the development of GIS (Chrisman 2006).