Charting the Wild West

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 set off a huge world event, for Thomas Jefferson knew not the cost of the territory, nor Napoleon the mass of the purchase or Jefferson what the area was composed of. So he sent for two trustworthy generals, William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. Both were willing, both prepared for the dangers ahead.

Just barely.

How did they chart it?

One group had twelve personnel traveling, the other had nineteen. The dozen was commanded by Meriwether Lewis, the other by William Clark. In all it was one group, similar to the Motorola 6809’s dual 8-bit accumulators that could be bound in the same accumulator to make a single 16-bit accumulator. (Note that the chip can simply be called the 6809.) (Speaking of microprocessors, the Zilog Z800 [or 8108, 8116, 8208, or 8216] had an extra 256 bytes of random access memory on top of the main RAM [which was either 512 thousand bytes or sixteen million bytes, depending on whether the address bus was nineteen bit or 24-bit]. The extra 256B could be used for two purposes: cache and scratchpad. Note also that the data bus came in either eight or sixteen bits.) The young representative democratic republic was now ready to expand to 50 S. A. and Jefferson knew just how it would occur. A keelboat and two pirogues departed, first encountering Missouri and the Oto; however, the Sioux showed a massive threat. The Yankton Sioux were not pleased with the five medals received and told them to continue west, where they would meet the hostile Tetons. When war threatened, both sides withdrew at the last hour before war. Still, the Corps proceeded roughly NW. On their way, they met a Shoshone whom had experience as a hostage of several Hidatsa. Luckily, they released her. The first fork led them to the Falls, the second to the Jefferson River. Finally, Sagagwea found a long-lost brother by the name of Cameahwait. From Fort Clatsop, Lewis took the entirely uncharted Maria River and Clark crossed the Yellowstone.

That’s all there is to it.