Historypin service will open a window to the past

Now a fairly popular genre of photography is “historical” photography ( let the photographers forgive me for inventing my own terms, I don’t know the exact definition of this type of photograph ), when a photograph taken in our time is superimposed with a photograph taken in the same place many years ago. In this case, the angle is selected in such a way that it all looks like a window into the past. In general, quite interestingly, I came across such photos several times, they can be considered for a very long time. This week the Historypin service is launched , the purpose of which is to show us all how certain places looked like many, many years ago.

The concept is simple - the service uses Google Maps, which “pins” old photos. Generally speaking, the idea is very interesting. After all, not all of us saw images of the same Red Square, 20-30-50 years ago. There will be photographs of Times Square dating from 1905 and 1945. By setting the search parameters, it will be possible to find old photos of a certain place for a certain period of time.

Historypin is a non-profit project, and its representatives have already agreed with many historical museums that have archival photos of different places on cooperation. As a result, there will simply be a huge number of photos previously hidden in archives on the Web. In addition, you can upload your own photo, with a brief annotation dedicated to a particular place or people that are shown in the photo.



The real purpose of Historypin is to create a team of authors who will upload archived photos, which are quite a lot for each of us, giving other people access to them. Right now, although the service is in beta, the photo database has tens of thousands of elements. In addition, about 20 thousand people registered on the service. The project has not yet released a mobile application, but this is one of the main tasks of Historypin. The mobile application will allow you to delve into the past by simply pointing your phone’s camera at a building or street.

Historypin is now starting to collect audio and video recordings of interesting events. For example, there is already an audio recording of Jimmy Hendrix’s performance at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969, and there are video recordings of various events.

The service promises to be very interesting, and most likely I will often look into it. How do you like this idea?

Via Mashable