Haarlem & Harlem on Google Maps

Haerlem.nu is a website dedicated to recording and presenting the history of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Part of the project includes a Google Map that features historical landmarks, photographs and historical notes about locations in the city.



If you sign-up as a 'mosquito' (as the natives of Haarlem call themselves) you can add your own memories, history or photos to the map. With Haerlem.nu you can even create your own map of Haarlem's history.



Via: Nederkaart





Digital Harlem is a Google Maps based portal to explore the history of New York City's Harlem neighborhood. The site uses Google Maps to present information about Harlem drawn from legal records, newspapers and other archival and published sources.



The map includes three buttons which allow you to view historical records from 1920, 1925 and 1930. The panel on the left allows you to search for events, people or places, and generate interactive web maps based on the search results.



Multiple layers of results can be displayed on the same map, and each can be toggled on and off. A series of ready-made 'feature' maps can be accessed from the panel on the right.



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How Countries Change on Google Maps

Here are two great Google Maps applications for anyone interested in history or genealogy. The applications allow you to view the changing boundaries of different countries and U.S. counties over time.

The Historical World Boundary Map application displays world political boundaries from 1946-2008. You can click any country on the map to view how its boundaries have changed over time.

The Historical County Boundary Map displays U.S. county boundaries for any historical year. You can click any county on the map to see the specific history of the boundary changes, and navigate through different years to see the boundary changes of the county over time.

Historical County Boundary Maps
Historical World Boundary Maps

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Google Map of the Week

Historypin

Historypin isn't a new map exactly but this week's release of some exciting new features is enough to make it my favourite map of the week.

There is a new Historypin mobile app. The mobile app and the desktop version have a new augmented reality view in Street View that dispays thumbnails of nearby photographs. If you click on one of the photographs you are immediately transported to that photo superimposed on the present day view in Street View.

Even more excitingly you can now view historical video clips superimposed on Street View. For example you can watch a 1903 film of the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York superimposed over the Street View of the bridge.

Another great new feature is the ability to create your own tours. You could create a tour of photographs of San Francisco taken before the 1906 earthquake. Alternatively take a tour created by others. For example this tour of photographs of Gandhi's visit to Britain in 1931.

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Historypin Goes Global

Last year Hitorypin launched in beta in London. Its use of historical photographs with Google Maps and Street View proved instantly very popular. Today it has officially launched with a new mobile app and global coverage.

As well as the new mobile app the desktop version has a number of exciting new features. When you a view a historical photograph superimposed on Street View in Google Maps now you can also pan the Street View around and view thumbnails of nearby photographs. If you click on one of the photographs you are immediately transported to that photo superimposed on the present day view in Street View.

Even more excitingly you can now view historical video clips superimposed on Street View. For example you can watch a 1903 film of the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York superimposed over the Street View of the bridge (view the film here on Historypin) .

Another great new feature is the ability to create your own tours. For example you could create a tour of photographs of San Francisco taken before the 1906 earthquake. Alternatively take a tour created by others. For example this tour of photographs of Gandhi's visit to Britain in 1931.

All-in-all Historypin 2.0 is a massive achievement. Take a look. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Historypin

Via: Google LatLong

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Make Your Own History Map

Weaving History from the Open Knowledge Foundation lets you create your own history maps with a little help from the Simile Timeline and Google Maps.

The Simile Timeline widget has long been a favourite tool for Google Maps developers who want to create maps about historic events. The programming skills required for both the timeline widget and the Google Maps API however does create a barrier for anyone who hasn't got the necessary knowledge of javascript.

With Weaving History you can create your own historical timeline and map without any programming skills. To create a new timeline map you just need to start a new 'thread' on Weaving History and add some relevant 'factlets'.

When adding factlets you can just add the URL of a Wikipedia article and the factlet is added automatically. As you add factlets to your thread they are automatically added to your thread. It is as easy as that.

Add a few factlets to a thread and you soon have your own historical timeline map.

Weaving History

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Mapping History with Google Maps

Maps+Motion

Maps+Motion is a great way to visualise the growth of Dutch cities and Manhattan in New York with Google Maps.

Essentially the application allows you to view side-by-side the modern maps of cities with maps of how the cities looked at different times in history. The screenshot above, for example, shows a map of 1450 Amsterdam with a modern map of the city.

The application currently allows you to view the historical growth of Den Haag, Harrlingen, Amsterdam, Leiden, Rotterdam and Zuiderzee in the Netherlands and Manhattan in the USA.

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D-Day on Google Maps and Street View

Yesterday was the anniversary of D-Day. On the 6th June, 1944 the Normandy landings commenced when Allied troops began Operation Neptune.



Google Sightseeing has posted a special round-up, called D-Day: The Monuments of the Normandy Landings. The post looks at the Google Maps satellite imagery and Street Views of the five main beaches where the landings took place, codenamed Juno, Gold, Sword, Utah and Omaha.

Google Sightseeing also take a look at some of the monuments that have been created to commemorate all those who lost their lives in the D-Day landings.

Historypin

Google Sightseeing also Tweeted today that Historypin has a few colour photographs of the landings, which you can view superimposed on the modern view of the beaches in Street View.

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Route Planning - The Ancient Roman Way

Omnes Viae: Itinerarium Romanum

With this ancient Roman route-planner you can pretend that you are Hannibal planning a journey from New Carthage to the very heart of the Roman Empire.

The Itinerarium Romanum is a route planner based on an ancient Roman map known as the 'Tabula Peutingeriana'. The route planner allows you to plan a route that contains all the main roads and cities of the Roman Empire.

To plan a trip enter locations into the 'ab' and 'ad' text boxes ('ab' and 'ad' are Latin for 'from' and 'to'). You can get locations from the Peutinger map or just use the auto-suggestions that appear when you start typing in the text boxes.

Once you submit your starting and end point your planned route is displayed. The route will show the towns and cites and also the river crossings for your trip. It will also include a link to view the route on Google Maps (for convenience I've combined the route-plan and map together in the image above).

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Historical Map Collections

One of the most popular uses of the Google Maps API since it was launched six years ago has been as a tool to view historical maps. The David Rumsey Collection, with its huge collection of historical maps, obviously stands out.

However it does not stand alone.

In the last six years Google Maps Mania has reviewed historical map mashups from the Netherlands, the UK, the USA, France, Japan and many other countries around the world. Here is a round-up of some of the best historical map we've seen:

David Rumsey Google Map Collection

The David Rumsey Google Map Collection contains an amazing 120 historical maps overlaid on Google Maps. For, example, the screen shot above shows an 1832 map of London overlaid on the current Google Map of London.

Highlights of the new maps include the first accurate survey of Yosemite Valley, California, from 1883, maps of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Washington DC, Denver, Chicago, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Calcutta, Lima, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Beijing, Tokyo, Kyoto, and more – all from times ranging from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries.

Also See

HyperCities - collection of worldwide historical maps
Maps of Edinburgh, 1765-1945
Historiekaart - Historical Dutch maps from 1829 to 1949
Utrecht van Boven
Amersfoort 750 op de Kaart
Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps
Historical Maps of Tokyo
Historical Maps of Paris
Henry Hudson 400 - US historical maps
PhilaPlace - Philadelphia
Retromap - historical maps of Moscow

Have we missed any historical maps mashups? If so - tell us in the comments ...

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Ye Olde Photo Google Map

Twixt Aire and Calder Historical Photos

The Twixt Aire and Calder Project in the UK have updated their Google Map that showcases historical photographs of the area. The map has been updated to use v3 of the Google Maps API and makes good use of the Styled Map feature to provide an appropriate sepia tone to the map.

Images from the Twixt Aire and Calder archive have been plotted on the map close to the location where they were taken. The photogrpahs have been grouped by date and it is possible to select to view photographs on the map by various date ranges.

Each photograph also has an option to view an historical Ordnance Survey map from the same date (or as close as possible) as when the photograph was taken.

Also See

• Historypin
  
• SepiaTown
• Then & Now - Australian Google Map showing historical photos alongside Street View images
• LookBackMaps - collection of historical photographs compared to Street View
• Utrecht van Boven - historical photos of Utrecht on a Google Map
• Sydney Sidetracks - a map of audio, video and photographic records of Sydney's past
• HistoGrafica - historical photographs on Google Maps
• Virtual Time Travel - archive film of locations. One of my own old mashups. Some of the videos may now have been removed from YouTube but there are still enough old films here to make it worth a visit.

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1850's England On Google Maps

England Jurisdictions 1851

Genealogy website Family Search has created a nice Google Map that let's you search for places by county, parish, hundred and province in England as they were constituted in 1851. The map should prove to be a great help for anyone who wants to search the geographical origins of ancestors from England in the 19th Century.

You can select to view the different administrative boundaries via a drop-down menu. You can also select an old Ordnance Survey map as the base layer instead of the Google Map. You can search for towns by name and it is also possible to click on the different administrative boundaries on the map to view further details about a location.

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London's Memorials on Google Maps

London Remembers

London Remembers has mapped over 2,000 memorials in London. Their website includes a Google Map showing the locations of plaques, monuments, statues and fountains throughout the capital.

Each mapped memorial includes a couple of photographs of the memorial. If you click the link in the marker you can view more details about who (or what) is being memorialised. If you don't want to browse London Remembers by location you can also search the database by name, category and date.

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A Google Map of the American Civil War

Washington Post Civil War Map

I do like my history served up on a nice map. And this is a very nice map!

The Washington Post's Google Map of the Civil War maps all the battles and casualties of the American Civil War. The map features an animated time-line that allows you to watch the war unfold over time. You can pause the animation at any time and you can also refine the view to show any period of time.

If you roll over the circles you can view the date and the casualties of the mapped battle. If you click on the circle you can read a more detailed account of the battle. There were a lot of battles and a lot of casualties in the Civil War so obviously a lot of work has gone into creating this map!

A lot of effort and an awesome map.

Also See

• The American Civil War Timeline Project

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American Civil War on Google Maps

The American Civil War Timeline Project

The American Civil War Timeline Project is an interesting attempt to chronologically and geographically map the events of the American Civil War using the open source Simile Timeline. The map includes Wiki style editing so registered users can add geographic/chronological data points to the project.

The site also has two other historical time-line maps:

The World War Two Timeline Project
The Napoleonic Wars Timeline Project

With all three maps, historical events are added to the map when you use the time-line interface above the map.

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The 1913 Dayton Flood on Google Maps

Dayton Flood 1913 - Postcards Map

In 1913 Dayton, Ohio was hit by three major storms in a matter of a few days. The rainfall caused the Great Miami River watershed and its tributaries to overflow. As a result downtown Dayton experienced flooding of up to 20 feet deep.

The Dayton Metro Library 1913 Flood Postcard Collection contains over 60 postcards that show images of the flood. Geoslideshow has put together this Google Map of the postcards showing the locations of the scenes depicted.

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Historical UK Maps API

National Library of Scotland Maps API

The National Library of Scotland has released an API to give developers access to a map of the UK using out of copyright Ordnance Survey maps, dating from the 1920s to the 1940s.

The API uses Google Maps to create an interactive map based on tiles created from the Ordnance Survey Maps. You can see the basic map here. This map can be embedded into other websites and blogs just by copying and pasting the iframe code. You can even embed a map using a dynamic URL so that the embedded map is zoomed and centred on your chosen location.

However you can also use the API to create your own mashups. For example here is a map that has an added transparency slider, that allows you to view the Google Map tiles beneath the OS maps.

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Time Travelling with Google Maps

There and Then

Why not let Google Maps take you back to the bygone days of the pre-digital world? This app I've put together superimposes historical YouTube videos on top of Street View to help transport you to a different age.

Using the chromeless video player, available in the YouTube API, I've tried to match a number of vintage films with the same view as seen in Street View today. The videos are mainly of 1920's Britain but there are few turn of the Twentieth Century U.S. videos in there as well.

To navigate to the different videos you just need to click on the thumbnail images at the bottom of the page.

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How Manhattan Grew on Google Maps

How Manhattan’s Grid Grew

In 1811, John Randel created a proposed street grid of Manhattan. The New York Times has created a Google Map that allows you to compare Randel's map to modern-day Manhattan.

The map also includes an 1836 map of the farms of Manhattan, a map of street openings since 1642 and historic census data. Each of the maps is supplemented by a transparency slider that allows you to view the modern map underneath.

The map of street openings since 1642 allows you to visualise the growth of Manhattan. If you use the time-line control you can watch the spread of Mahattan from just a few streets to the present urban sprawl.

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Wikipedia Chloropeth on Google Maps

Ragtag Map of Wikipedia Articles

The Ragtag blog has created a Google Map of every Wikipedia page tagged with a latitude and longitude. 424,171 articles in Wikipedia have been geotagged. You can see the geographical distribution of the articles in the heat map above.

Ragtag were also able to find 14,238 historical events that were geotagged on Wikipedia. By plotting the events by year and location Ragtag have managed to create a dynamic visualisation that gives a rough idea of the history of the world in 100 seconds.



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Ye Olde San Francisco on Google Maps

Time Shutter

Time Shutter is another great Google Maps based website that allows people to see how cities used to look and how they have changed. Users can upload historical images to the site and browse through the images submitted by others.

Currently the site is concentrating on historical images of San Francisco but images for New York will also soon be added. The site includes many postcards of San Francisco from around 1900 and includes a historical map overlay featuring the Chevalier Commercial, Pictorial and Tourist Map of San Francisco from 1903.

Time Shutter is also available as a free iPhone application.

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