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https://pastmaps.com https://pastmaps.com I'm building Pastmaps - striving to eventually be the world's largest online collection of old maps, aerials, and pho

by Soupy 2y ago

https://pastmaps.com https://pastmaps.com I'm building Pastmaps - striving to eventually be the world's largest online collection of old maps, aerials, and photos all packaged into a public historical research platform that's as easy to use as Google Maps. This has been a labor of love now for about a year, but I still have a huge mountain to climb to realize the full vision. Give it a try and give me your harsh criticisms - that's the greatest gift you could give me! Even in it's current state, it's being used by geneologists, urban explorers, search & rescue teams, real estate developers, government agencies, etc. The number of exploding use-cases continues to astound me and keeps me motivated to continue.

yannis 2y ago
Nice collection but very US-centric. Is there a plan to extend it to other countries? Thinking tourists, historians and the like.
purplezooey 2y ago
This is badass. love it. Wish you could make an account with a regular email address, though, and not just with Google.
ycombinatornews 2y ago
I love pastmaps! Nice to see you on HN!
SmellTheGlove 2y ago
Criticism: This is going to suck. Too much of my time, that is. This is super cool, thank you for doing this!
wahnfrieden 2y ago
Just be careful in countries like Japan where old maps sometimes are used illegally to discriminate based on caste (tracing ancestry of workers/candidates to discriminate against ones coming from certain historically lower caste areas of towns and cities). You might catch negative attention if your tool makes it easy to reference these maps
082349872349872 2y ago
Excellent! When reading Galois' coroner's report, I was happy to be able to find an old Paris map online that showed roughly where he had been the day of his duel and the route the farmer who found him would've taken to the hospital.
kfarr 2y ago
Wow this is super cool! I've hacked together some equivalent for small projects. Curious if these are hosted as tiles that can be referenced by third-party servers? For context I'm working on an app called 3DStreet[1]. It's mostly used by planners for future projects, but I've been excited about the possibility of helping to visualize the past too. [1] https://3dstreet.com/ https://3dstreet.com/

by Soupy 2y ago

yannis 2y ago

Nice collection but very US-centric. Is there a plan to extend it to other countries? Thinking tourists, historians and the like.

purplezooey 2y ago

This is badass. love it. Wish you could make an account with a regular email address, though, and not just with Google.

ycombinatornews 2y ago

I love pastmaps! Nice to see you on HN!

SmellTheGlove 2y ago

Criticism: This is going to suck. Too much of my time, that is. This is super cool, thank you for doing this!

wahnfrieden 2y ago

Just be careful in countries like Japan where old maps sometimes are used illegally to discriminate based on caste (tracing ancestry of workers/candidates to discriminate against ones coming from certain historically lower caste areas of towns and cities). You might catch negative attention if your tool makes it easy to reference these maps

082349872349872 2y ago

Excellent! When reading Galois' coroner's report, I was happy to be able to find an old Paris map online that showed roughly where he had been the day of his duel and the route the farmer who found him would've taken to the hospital.

kfarr 2y ago

Wow this is super cool! I've hacked together some equivalent for small projects. Curious if these are hosted as tiles that can be referenced by third-party servers? For context I'm working on an app called 3DStreet[1]. It's mostly used by planners for future projects, but I've been excited about the possibility of helping to visualize the past too. [1] https://3dstreet.com/ https://3dstreet.com/