 The effort to automate map plotting began in the United States in 1969, with the process complete in the 1970s.Hong Kong completed their process of automated surface plotting by 1987.By 1999, computer systems and software had finally become sophisticated enough to allow for the ability to underlay on the same workstation satellite imagery, radar imagery, and model-derived fields such as atmospheric thickness and frontogenesis in combination with surface observations to make for the best possible surface analysis.