Google Maps ©Christine Rondeau
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Don’t you hate it when you travel back in time and get lost in old-timey San Francisco because the GPS on your iphone doesn’t work?
Enter: Pastmapper. Pastmapper is a sort of Google Maps for historical locations (although right now it only covers San Francisco circa 1853) created by designer Brad Thompson.
Thompson describes his site as,
“a new platform for organizing data using the visual language of online maps to describe the world of the past.”
Using historical maps like the U.S. Coast Survey map from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection and historical sources like directory information from A.W. Morgan & Company’s San Francisco City Directory, Thompson has created a visual representation of what the city looked like during the peak of the gold rush.
Thompson’s ultimate vision is to expand Pastmapper to every city, at every time in history for which information is available.
All time travelers should make sure that you have a full charge before you head back in time, chances of finding electricity where you can juice up your iphone will probably be quite slim…
Read more at Huffington Post.