Long ago, the prevailing approach to Geometry was to follow the methods established by Euclid in the 300s B.C. (Perball, 2017). However, towards the end of the 19th century, a Polish-German mathematician named Herman Minkowski, introduced a set of novel distance metrics, referred to as a family of "metrics" (Perball, 2017; Reinhardt, 2005). The "metrics" represent a mathematical structure in which distance measurements are defined to adhere to a rule (or function) between any two points in a set (Reynolds, 1980). Among these "metrics" is the 'taxicab metric', where it mimics the distances that a taxicab would have to drive in an ideally laid-out city that runs due north/south or east/west (Reynolds, 1980). Eugene Krause, a Mathematics professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in Taxicab Geometry: An Adventure in Non- Euclidean geometry, that "apparently no one has yet set up a full geometry based on the taxicab metric. It would seem that the time has come to do so” (Reynolds, 1990 as cited in Krause, 1975).
The name 'taxicab' was not used until 1952 when Karl Menger (1902-1985) established a geometry exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago (Kemp, 2018 as cited in Reinhardt, 2005). This exhibit featured a booklet titled You Will Like Geometry, marking the first use of the term 'taxicab' geometry (Reinhardt, 2005 as cited in Golland, 1990; Kunwar, 2018).
Today, Taxicab geometry is known by various names such as 'City-Block-', 'Manhattan-Order-Minkowski-' Geometries (Perball, 2017). This geometry is valuable for its simplicity as a non-Euclidean Geometry, making it more comprehensible and understanable (Kunwar, 2018). According to Kunwar (2018), the grid or Cartesian based orientation means that it can be introduced as early as in the middle school years.
