Friday, July 03, 2009

Historical Maps From Hypercities


This is a terrific historical web mapping site. It's called Hypercities Beta 2 and shows only select cities at this time. For those certain cities they provide georectified maps going back to as far as 1710 for Berlin. I will show you these below. I think the application for teaching and learning and the ease of use in the classroom is clear. The last two screen captures show a feature from 1710 Berlin that is no longer there in today's Berlin. The site uses Firefox or Safari.


Some of the cities featured in Hypercities include Berlin, Lima, London, Los Angeles, New York and more. Below, I've shown Berlin through time.

Berlin today, above

Berlin 1988


Berlin 1978


Berlin 1947


Berlin 1845, showing the railroad system


Berlin 1926


Berlin 1871


Berlin 1805


Berlin 1766


Berlin 1710

Berlin in 1710 with a fortress outlined using a polygon tool (shown circled in green)



And the location of the 1710 fortress overlain on Berlin today.

This web site was another gem found on Twitter. Who needs an RSS feed anymore? Thanks TimHitchcock.Link

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