It's Time for Google Maps

The new Symbols function and Heatmap Layer in the Google Maps API mean that it is now much easier for developers to create compelling map visualisations.

Both these features make it much easier for developers to add animations to maps. The result is that Google Maps can now beautifully render data both spatially and temporally. 

This morning I've been playing with the new Heatmap Layer. The Blitz Map is an animated heat map of the bombs dropped on London on the first night of the London Blitz in the Second World War. So far I've plotted about 500 of the over 800 bombs (I'm planning to add the rest later today).

I've cheated a little with the timing on the map. At the moment the map just adds the bombs sequentially, step by step, and doesn't use a real time-frame. It should be simple however to add a real time-line to the map at a later date.

Tracking the Tardis in Space & Time

In a piece of detective work worthy of Torchwood, Retronaut have managed to sift through thousands of old photographs to track Doctor Who's movements through space and time. Ghost's of the Tardis, 1930-2011 is a record of images of the Tardis found in photographs from the last 80 years.

The dates of the photographs help to track the Doctor in time and Retronaut have used Google Maps Street View to also track him in space. Each photograph has been superimposed on the modern Street View of the location where the picture was shot.

Some will argue that this is just a collection of old photographs of British police boxes. I prefer to believe that this is the best attempt yet to track the Doctor's movements through time & space. Well, the best attempt after the actual BBC documentaries of the Doctor's exploits in all his incarnations.

Roman Empire Route Planners

ORBIS - The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World allows users to explore road, river and sea routes through the Roman Empire.

Google Maps users are used to having four possible transportation options when searching for directions (car, public transit, bike and on foot). ORBIS allows for fourteen different modes of road travel (including ox cart, mule, camel caravan and horse relay). Unlike Google Maps ORBIS also allows for seasonal differences in route times, taking into account the possibility of rough or unfavourable weather.


Omnes Viae: Itinerarium Romanum is another Roman route planner (this one actually uses Google Maps).

Omnes Viae is based on an ancient Roman map known as the 'Tabula Peutingeriana' and allows you to plan a route that contains all the main roads and cities of the Roman Empire. Routes generated by Omnes Viae list the towns and cites and also the river crossings on your trip in the map sidebar and display the actual route on a Google Map.

Vintage Film on Google Maps

I've added a few more archive videos to my Street View application There and Then. The app allows you to watch historical films embedded on a Google Maps Street View image of the same scene, as it looks today. 

If you like this sort of thing you should also check out Historypin, which now also includes a few early film scenes, dotted in amongst all the user submitted historical photographs.

The History of the USA on Google Maps

The History Engine is an educational project from the University of Richmond that is creating a collection of historical articles about life in the United States throughout its history.

The History Engine includes a Google Maps based time-line that allows users to explore the project's history articles by date and by location. If you select a decade from the time-line states that have essays available from that decade are highlighted on the map.

If you select a highlighted state the available essays can be accessed by clicking on the map markers that appear on the map.

Via: @geoparadigm

The Diamond Jubilee on Google Maps

Google and Historypin have created an interactive archive of photographs and videos from Queen Elizabeth's visits and jubilee celebrations over the six decades of her reign.

For the project Historypin want to collect as many contributions as possible, from individuals and archives all around the world. So if you have any Queen Elizabeth related photographs or videos you can add them to the Historypin - Diamond Jubilee Album.

Historypin, if you still haven't seen it, is a great collection of user submitted historical photographs and videos which can be viewed on Google Maps. One of the stand-out features of Historypin is the ability to view the photos and videos superimposed on the modern Google Maps Street View image.

Another stand-out feature is the ability to create your own album. This Golden Jubilee album is a great way to promote this feature. I'm sure Historypin will be getting a lot more UK users due to this new project.

A Guide to the World's Historical Maps

Old Maps Online is a great portal for searching for and finding historical maps in libraries around the world.

Using a Google Maps API application it is possible to search for historical maps by location and by date. You can search for maps by searching for a location or by positioning the map over the area you are interested in, and define the date with a slide control.

The search results for the location and date defined are automatically presented in the map sidebar with a direct link to the map image on the website of the host institution.

OldMapsOnline has been created by a collaboration between The Great Britain Historical GIS Project based at The University of Portsmouth, UK and Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland.

The Knights Templar on Google Maps

The Knights Templar are perhaps the most well known of the Christian military orders of knights that were founded to fight in the crusades. Project Beauceant is a website documenting the history of the Templar Order.

The Project Beauceant Google Map shows the European and Middle Eastern locations of the order's commanderies (administrative areas), battles and fortresses. The map links lead to the French language version of the website but there is the option to view the site in English.

Via: Street View Funny

John Snow's Cholera Map on Google Maps

CartoDB is a great platform that allows you to map data and develop location aware applications quickly and easily. In CartoDB's demo gallery you can find this example of John Snow's Cholera Map of London presented with CartoDB.

The map demonstrates how CartoDB is able to quickly combine different data-types and display them on a map. John Snow's spot map of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London in 1854 helped to prove that the disease was caused by water (coming from one pump in Broad Street).


If you want to see John Snow's original map using the Google Maps zooming and panning tools then you should check out Hypercities.

Hypercities is a Google Maps mashup of historical maps available for many of the world's cities. Hypercities allows the user to navigate a selection of historical maps using the familiar Google Maps navigation tools. If you zoom into London on Hypercities you can choose to view John Snow's map overlaid on top of the modern map of London.

The Domesday Book on Google Maps

The Domesday Book is the result of a survey carried out in England and parts of Wales in 1086. The book is one of the first and therefore oldest public records in England and therefore serves as a great resource for geographers, genealogists and historians.

The Open Domesday Book is the first free online copy of the Domesday Book. It also includes a great Google Maps interface that allows users to search for locations and quickly find references in the Domesday Book to the location and places nearby.

If you search for a location you can view on a Google Map the places mentioned in the Book in that area. If you click through on any of the referenced locations you can view an image of the original text and a breakdown of the data recorded in the Domesday Book.

Google Maps of the Ancient World

Pleiades is a great resource for anyone interested in the history and geography of the ancient world. The site is a community based and open-sourced gazette of ancient places.

The welcome page of Pleiades features a nice animated Google Map that animates through some of the ancient places in the gazette. Google Maps are also used throughout the site to show the locations of ancient place names.

Each individual ancient place map includes markers of nearby ancient places. Pleiades also contains a large collection of user contributed Collected Places, where ancient places are grouped by theme, for example Roman, Medieval, temples, roads etc.

Also See
Omnes Viae: Itinerarium Romanum - a route planner based on the ancient Roman map the 'Tabula Peutingeriana'

London's History on Google Maps

Locating London's Past is a superb tool for exploring London's past on Google Maps.

The map allows users to visualise data relating to seventeenth and eighteenth-century London against John Rocque’s 1746 map of London. The data sets that can be viewed on the map include records of Old Bailey Proceedings, coroner's records, historical directories, plague deaths, archaeology finds and much more.

Locating London's Past has big plans for the application. They say that additional maps of London and relevant mappable datasets concerning any aspect of London's medieval, early modern, and modern history will be added to the application as they become available.

The Biggest Project Undertaken by One Man

I think Brad Thompson has just started one of the biggest projects ever undertaken by just one man. Pastmapper is "a new platform for organizing data using the visual language of online maps to describe the world of the past."

A very early prototype of the project can be viewed at Pastmapper - San Francisco 1853. This is a map of San Francisco in 1853, using geometries from a scan of a US Coast Survey Map. Overlaid on the map is data from the 1852-53 San Francisco city directory.

The result is an interactive map of San Francisco in 1853, with map markers that you can click on to view the people and businesses that were listed as living or based in a particular building in 1853.

Brad says he wants 'to scale (Pastmapper) to every location and every year'. That will obviously prove a huge task. But what an achievement that would be. Imagine if he manages to succeed in his project just for San Francisco. Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to view the history of a building or neighborhood through time. As Brad says it would be amazing to be able to sit in a cafe and look it up on Pastmapper and find at different times in its history it had been a 'saloon, or a speakeasy, or a soda fountain – or all three'.

Historical Moscow on Google Maps

Old Maps of Moscow has a very large collection of historical maps of the Russian capital.

The site uses Google Maps to help users navigate the historical collection. Users need to click on the Google Map of Moscow to show the location they are interested in viewing. Then they can select from the many historical maps to view the chosen location on their chosen map.

The map collection goes back to 1739 and includes plans, topographic maps, historical aerial photography and much more.

Cleveland's History at Your Fingertips

Cleveland Historical is a fantastic free app for the desktop and for Android and iPhones that puts Cleveland's history at your fingertips. Using the app you can wander around Cleveland and explore the people, places, and moments that have shaped the city’s history.

The Google Map on the Cleveland Historical home page allow users to explore the many historical locations and tours available on the site. The site includes a large number of map-based, curated historical multimedia presentations of the city's history.

If you live in or plan to visit Cleveland then get this app. It's brilliant and it's free!

Historical Map Collections

Historic Map Works has a great collection of antique maps, most of which can be viewed via a Google Maps interface.

The historic maps are overlaid on Google Maps. An opacity slider allows the user to adjust the transparency, so that the historical map can be compared to the modern map view underneath.

Also See

David Rumsey Map Collection - huge collection of historical maps.
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

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San Francisco 1930's Aerial View

The ever excellent David Rumsey Map Collection has put online a huge collection of aerial photographs of San Francisco taken in 1938. They are also working hard on creating a composite image of all the images joined together.

So far 46 of the images have been stitched together and you can view the resulting aerial map of 1930's San Francisco with the help of the Google Earth browser plugin.

The images are also available as a KML which means you can examine the photos on Google Maps as well.

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Historical Weimar on Google Maps

Zeitsprung uses historical photographs from the Weimar city archives to allow users to see how the German city has changed over time.

The site uses a jQuery slider control that allows the user to compare a historical photo with a photograph of the same view today. The photos can be browsed by location with the help of a Google Map. Alternatively it is possible to organise the photos by date or by title.

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Historical Photos of Philly on Google Maps

PhillyHistory.org provides access to the incredible collection of historic photos of Philadelphia held by the City of Philadelphia, Department of Records.

Users of the site can search for photos based on geographic location, subject matter, or date. The location of the view depicted in individual photos is marked for reference on an interactive map. Whilst the map itself doesn't use the Google Maps API PhillyHistory.org does make great use of Google Maps Street View.

When you select an historical photograph there is the option to see the same view portrayed in the picture using Google Maps Street View (where available). This provides a great way to see how Philadelphia has changed over the years.

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1930's Connecticut on Google Maps

Neighborhood Change in Connecticut lets you view aerial imagery of Connecticut from 1934 side-by-side with the modern satellite view on Google Maps.

This map, created by the Trinity College and University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, lets you explore the changing landscapes of Connecticut from the 1930's to the present. The dual map control allows you to zoom in on different areas and compare the past and present views. For example, in the picture above you can see commercial development on formerly rural farmland.

As well as imagery of Connecticut from 1934 the map includes aerial imagery from 1990, 2004 and 2006.

Also See

• The New Jersey State Atlas - aerial photography of the entire state taken in the 1930's
• Sasgis.by.ru - World War II aerial photographs of Russia
• Declassified Military Aerial Images Map - Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monument of Scotland's declassified military aerial photographs of Europe

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