[HN Gopher] London Street Views (1840)
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       London Street Views (1840)
        
       Author : jfil
       Score  : 160 points
       Date   : 2025-02-03 05:19 UTC (17 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.davidrumsey.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.davidrumsey.com)
        
       | mediumsmart wrote:
       | looks great once you zoom in but I don't get it. how do I open
       | one of them to look at it - I can only zoom into the whole mosaic
       | - why can I not click on one of them and bring it to the front or
       | go to a page that deals with that view/street?
        
         | jesprenj wrote:
         | You can't, because it's a single composite image of all of
         | them.
        
         | Brybry wrote:
         | I think this is 1 to 77 but I couldn't find/figure out a search
         | for 78 to 88
         | 
         | https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?search=...
        
       | tkgally wrote:
       | It's quite a bit more recent, but this reminded me of David
       | Bleicher's Instagram page "Then and Now London." He takes
       | photographs in the same London locations as photos taken decades
       | ago and puts them side by side:
       | 
       | https://www.instagram.com/thenandnowlondon/
        
         | hnlmorg wrote:
         | That's a nice find. Thanks for sharing.
         | 
         | Unfortunately it's very hard to enjoy these kinds of blogging
         | now that Meta have completely locked up the internet.
        
         | kqr wrote:
         | This is also sometimes known as rephotography. Some of the most
         | striking examples I've seen seamlessly blend the old and new.
         | Such as this campus location, which really illustrates how
         | similar people are across time:
         | https://blogs.ubc.ca/difficultknowledge/files/2016/09/UBCLib...
        
         | s_weber wrote:
         | You can find more "then and now pictures" (rephotography) on
         | re.photos. It has an archive of around 3000 pictures from
         | around the world. (I developed the website as a final project
         | during my studies. It's a bit dated but still alive and
         | kicking.)
         | 
         | https://www.re.photos/en/compilation/
        
       | Lio wrote:
       | I love seeing the (1840) in the title.
       | 
       | For a split second it makes my pre-coffee brain think, my god
       | that's an old post!
        
         | chrizel wrote:
         | I was shortly excited because I expected Google Street View
         | from the 1840s, oh well...
        
           | jll29 wrote:
           | That's what should me made of the old 2D maps. Should be
           | possiblel thanks to LLMs now.
        
       | seer wrote:
       | There seems to be quite a lot of detail in all of these drawings,
       | I wonder if one can't reconstruct an actual street view given all
       | that data, and a few historical paintings to "seed the color and
       | style" a bit. Probably not impossible to do with modern LLMs
        
       | dostick wrote:
       | Looks like the image in thumbnail preview is all you're getting,
       | and at that low resolution.
        
         | quietbritishjim wrote:
         | I thought the same thing, I'm guessing you're also on mobile.
         | If you switch to desktop mode then it lets you zoom in to more
         | detail.
        
         | bananaflag wrote:
         | There is a download link
        
         | SamBam wrote:
         | On desktop, it's scroll to zoom.
        
       | noelwelsh wrote:
       | I like the British Pathe films from the late 1890s / early 1900s:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtRiMS34KxQ&list=PLxYjYcgwal...
       | 
       | (More examples in the playlist.)
       | 
       | Large parts of London still look the same, but the way of life is
       | vastly different. Just on a surface level, you can see how roads
       | are used differently (there are a few horses and a lot of
       | pedestrians) and with poorly insulated buildings everyone has to
       | wear insulation.
        
       | larusso wrote:
       | I love it. Never seen this kinda concept before. But it totally
       | makes sense to map whole streets like this.
        
       | fritzo wrote:
       | Feature request, can someone integrate this into the DOOM engine
       | so one can navigate 19th century london?
        
         | SamBam wrote:
         | I was going to say, that or put it into a Google Street View
         | style map. That would be amazing.
        
       | TheRealPomax wrote:
       | If there's a map, and a sidebar with overflow, please don't have
       | a page-level scrollbar, put the scrollbar on the sidebar that
       | needs scroll functionality =(
        
       | aaronbrethorst wrote:
       | Ed Ruscha's riff on this 120 years later:
       | https://www.moma.org/collection/works/146931
        
       | pwillia7 wrote:
       | Ran these through some AI color/restore workflows:
       | https://imgur.com/gallery/london-street-views-1840-set-1-Ss1...
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-03 23:02 UTC)