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I'm referring to this icon

enter image description here

I'm just curious as to its origins and what the name of the symbol is. If memory serves, Google Maps introduced it and the other mapping libraries adopted it. Would anybody know what the symbol is called or is it just a "map marker"? Did it exist before web maps or is purely a product of the web map age? Or is just a stylized pin?

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Jens Rasmussen, one of the inventors of Google Maps, a Danish computer programmer is credited with the creation of what is officially known as the map pin or pushpin.

See this New York Times article which is referenced in his official wikipedia page

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    Well, I came across this article last week, and had just returned from Denmark and done my first ever Google Maps page, so it stuck in my head :-) – John Powell Dec 7 '14 at 12:39
  • So it really is a pushpin. Heh. At least it looked better than the Google Earth pushpins. Though I seem to prefer Leaflet's pushpins better. – R.K. Dec 7 '14 at 12:42
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    Apparently so. It is clever, cartographically speaking, though as it avoids the problems of obscuring the thing you are trying to highlight, as the article says. Leaflet, it is very beatufiful, it is true. I am an OpenLayers guy and am trying to avoid its seductive winks (the learning curve of OL3 is making Leaflet more seductive by the moment). :D – John Powell Dec 7 '14 at 12:44

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