The London Time Machine | Hacker News Reader

The London Time Machine

maps.arcgis.com

85 pointskawera17 comments

I really like the magnifying glass!

A comparison with much more recent history, OpenStreetMap in 2007 vs now: https://mvexel.github.io/thenandnow/#13/51.5/0.0 - London is where OSM started, so it was pretty well mapped even in 2007 (OSM started in late 2004). If you look at other parts of the world or even the UK, it's easy to imagine how almost everyone thought it was a crazy idea that would never get off the ground.

There are some rendering issues (like water missing) due to the OSM schema going through some significant changes over the years.

Similar things for Sweden, with a couple of different interfaces:

- Maps from today and from about 60 years ago. Slide the barrier left and right. https://kartor.eniro.se/?c=59.314311,18.069699&z=16&l=histor...

- Comparison between 20 different maps from 1625 to today. Click "Byt kartvy" (found at the right edge) to get a side-by-side view. https://stockholmskallan.stockholm.se/sok/?q=&map=true

The National Library of Scotland has a good collection of digitised maps (mostly for the UK, but also less-detailed maps of Europe and the world) [1].

If you click "Explore georeferenced maps" you can superimpose the historical map on top of a modern base map (or Bing Satellite imagery), and then adjust its transparency with a slider: here's a similar view using the 1885-1093 One-Inch OS survey map [2] (for comparison, the map pasted by the OP is from 1682, which an information box tells you, but only if your browser-window is wide enough).

[1]: http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore

[3]: http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=14&lat=51.5100&lon=-0.0...

I built a platform that does this a year ago, using a combined stack of human and AI (Comouter vision) - it’s somewhat in maintenance mode because I haven’t had time to work on selling it, but there’s a version of Paris on the home page: http://www.papermap.io

That looks really impressive and I'd be very curious to learn about how you put it together.

Also, what happened to "Our dedicated team of developers are improving the papermap system constantly so be on the lookout for new features coming soon!"? ;)

The location of streets and subdivision of property is incredibly long lasting. That makes it such an important part of city planning!

It's always incredible to me to how many areas of London are new. The East End here is some text describing City wards. The West End is names of sponsors. Chelsea isn't even within the bounds of the map. There is only a single crossing. Etc.

The original map dates from 1682, which didn't jump out if it was mentioned at all on the linked site. So "new" is relative, i.e. less than 335 years old.

Well, something being new is always relative isn't it?

Yes. I would argue, though, that the really striking thing about new bits of London is the expansion between 1918 and 1939, which increased the built-up area by 200%. That was real inflationary growth.

Yet Old Street was already "Old", 335 years ago!

Old Street is roughly colinear with Old Ford Road, which went over the Lee (aka Lea). It's also colinear with Oxford Street. The route is pre-Roman.

(I used to live just off Old Ford Road, and commuted along this route for about 8 years.)

Nice. Not London, but the NY Public Library has a very nice set of "time traveler" tools for NYC here: http://spacetime.nypl.org/

Did something similar a long, long time ago: https://patrickbrosi.de/tuemap/

Fun! Made something similar a while back with Taiwanese cities in WWII and now, the changes are quite similarly substantial! https://imrehg.github.io/taiwanmap/

Can’t see Newgate prison, ashamed of it even back then?

Comic sans?

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