Pinning History to the World

Partnered with Google, Historypin brings over 71,000 photos, videos, audio clips and stories to your computer in ways you have never imagined.  You can explore their collections and create your own collection of photographs linked to history.  It's fun, easy and addictive.  On the home page a video will take you through the highlights of Historypin in 90 seconds.  Be sure you watch it!

Click on "Explore the Map."  This brings up a Google map of the British Isles and continental Europe.  The fun is not limited to that part of the world.  Query boxes are located at the top of the map page.  You can enter search terms, such as a location or topic or combination of the two.  Next to that is a time frame that allows you to select the era of interest, or explore all of the time periods.  Let the whirling fun begin as you travel to that location in the world!

You can zoom in and out, change time periods and best of all, begin clicking on the photos that are pinned to the map.  A small photo will pop up along with information.  If you click on the pen and paper, a story will appears, sometimes with audio.  Zoom in on the map or in satellite view for a closer look around.

Historypin does even more.  In the description box of the photo, look for the double arrow.  Click on that and suddenly you are taken to a street view.  In the background is the street as it appears today with the old photograph superimposed over it.  To go back to the map and resume searching, look for the double arrow in the right hand portion of the screen.

Between GoogleEarth and Historypin, I may come up only for air.  Somebody order pizza delivery.  I'm glued to my computer!