Travel to the past with Google Earth and relive “Historic Images”

Apparently, Google, the most important internet search engine, not only leads the market in that field, but also in the development of applications. This can be seen in the continuous avant-garde tools that introduces daily. This time around, and added to its new feature called “Historic Images”, which allows you to see almost any spot on Earth and “go back in time” to be witness of their evolution, now it’s possible to superimpose to Google Earth certain antique maps to go back in time even further.

For obvious reasons, with Google Earth you’ll not be able to do big jumps backwards, and in most cases, there will be only 8 years to enjoy sharp and surprising satellital images. Depending on the place you choose, the age and availability of “Historic Images” may vary, but to go back many years, David Rumsey offers on his website a single file (Rumsey Collection), which loads shortcuts on Google Earth to superimpose a lot of old maps with the original layers.

With its typical sepia tonality, the drawings that were used to fill in the blank spaces, the ink they used to write, the stamp of the cartographic societies that published the map and the addressee, the old cartographies that Rumsey offers are mainly compositions of diverse parts, helping the discovery and investigation of many countries (for example: all South America in 1787, Spain in 1701, Greece in 1708, etc.)

Organized by continents, countries and age, the only thing left is selecting them on the lateral foldout menu “Places” to activate them and automatically superimpose with the Google Earth layers. This saves the tiresome job of importing other maps and having to put them with precision on the exact place.

This way, to the now well-known “Virtual Flights” around the world, “Street View” (360° panoramic view of the place), “Explore the Oceans” or travel the moon’s and Mars’ surface in 3D, amongst many options, Google Earth adds the possibility to “fly” to practically any place to see how it was a few years back. Just like that, we are able to go back in time and visit our native country, its condition in the past, follow the development of the new societies or neighborhoods, remember antique familiar places or see how the weather affected the Planet, to name a few of the many memories that you can relive with this new feature of Google Earth .