Swiss Historical Maps Allow Journey Through Time In Your Browser 32
An anonymous reader writes "The Swiss Federal Office of Topography has published a complete set of digitized historical maps from 1938 to 2011. The twist: a browser application allows you to create a time travel movie at any place in Switzerland for any zoom level. As an example, you can see the recession of Europe's biggest glacier over the last 75 years. The application is the most recent effort of the Swiss Government to make geodata freely available to the public at no cost using open source software and will include maps dating as far back as 1838."
Re:Google Maps (Score:5, Informative)
This is possible in Google Earth, it is a really neat feature. For some areas they have imagery that dates back to the 80s.
For instance, you can check naval bases and see which aircraft carriers have been in at certain times. Or, more mundane, just look at how your neighbourhood/city has expanded/changed over the years.
Re:1838? 1938? Which is it? (Score:5, Informative)
It's 1938 so far, they have much older maps that they're still working on. 1838 was the year the first full-country map of Switzerland was published.