Monday, March 07, 2016

London's Historic Street View


A new interactive map from Expedia allows you to explore how London has changed in the last one hundred years. Using the map you can view a series of vintage photographs of England's capital city, and compare these historical images to the same view today, as captured by Google Maps Street View.

Historic London by Expedia allows you to view vintage photographs of London superimposed on top of the same view in Google Maps Street View. The historic photographs capture some of London's most iconic buildings and locations, including Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and Piccadilly Circus.


It isn't only still photography that can be shown on top of Street View. You can also superimpose videos on top of Google's interactive  panoramas.

Five years ago I used the Google Maps API to create There and Then. There and Then presents a series of early vintage film footage placed on top of Google Maps Street View. The site allows you to watch a number of old, vintage films shot in locations around the world and compare the scenes depicted to the same view today, as captured on Google Maps.


Of course the undoubted leaders in the archiving of historical photographs is Historypin. Historypin allows anyone to add old photographs to the Historypin archive and then view the photographs superimposed on top of Street View.

Historypin has a huge collection of photographs that have been uploaded to the site, This allows you to explore the history of locations right around the world. As well as this huge collection of still photography Historypin also includes a smaller number of vintage film clips that users have also uploaded to the site.

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