I wonder if it would be possible to generate street view like navigation of the world decades ago by geolocating photos. Could we reconstruct a 1920s city for example?
In popular areas with lots of overlapping photos, something akin to that was possible with PhotoSynth where it joined together matching photos projected into an inferred 3D space. Sadly the service was discontinued a while back.
In 1970 a massive project crowdsourced thousands of photographs of everywhere in Paris (nearly every single grid square on each letter sized page, a rare few have no photos).
To see the photos, click on a map section to go to the subgrid page. Then find the square grid number that corresponds to where you want to see and click the corresponding numbered link from the list at the top.
Compare with one of my favourite maps of all times, the Turgot Map of 1730s Paris. The full-res image is worth the giant download, it's a lot of fun to just pan around.
There's a pretty great article here in English, full of details about this collection of over 30k amateur photographs: Catherine E. Clark, "'C’était Paris en 1970': Amateur Photography, Urbanism and Photographic History"
Theres some similar data from Montreal. I once made a draggable map out of a bunch if 1947 aerials a long time ago, but the hosting/dns screwed up when i moved the domain. Oh well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth
In 1970 a massive project crowdsourced thousands of photographs of everywhere in Paris (nearly every single grid square on each letter sized page, a rare few have no photos).
To see the photos, click on a map section to go to the subgrid page. Then find the square grid number that corresponds to where you want to see and click the corresponding numbered link from the list at the top.
Some cool example locations:
By the Eiffel Tower: https://paris1970.jeantho.eu/carres/718.html
The Arc de Triomphe: https://paris1970.jeantho.eu/carres/427.html
Gare du Nord (urban area train station, less touristy): https://paris1970.jeantho.eu/carres/268.html
Random southern Paris neighborhood (many photos of streets, people, more suburban): https://paris1970.jeantho.eu/carres/1296.html
Random central Paris neighborhood (lots of photos, mainly of the urban architecture): https://paris1970.jeantho.eu/carres/507.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turgot_map_of_Paris
https://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques/3407
Oh, and the source code for this website is here:
https://framagit.org/dohseven/paris-1970