Google has juxtaposed the old world and the new, with the addition of Rumsey Historical Maps to the Google Earth application. Google Earth’s 3-D interactive globe, based on satellite images, can now be overlaid with historical maps, layering the present with the past. David Rumsey, who collected and supplied the Rumsey maps (from his collection of 150,000), described his experience with the new resource:

“I was able to explore and fly around the old maps and use the transparency slider to compare the old world and the new; as I did this, I thought to myself that this is the perfect marriage of historic cartographic masterpieces with the innovative contemporary software tools of Google.”

– Read more in his post on the Google blog.

Google Earth features 16 historic maps, including:

• World Globe 1790
• North America 1733
• United States 1833
• Lewis and Clark 1814
• New York 1836
• San Francisco 1853
• South America 1787
• Buenos Aires 1892
• Asia 1710
• Tokyo 1680
• Middle East 1861
• England, Wales 1790
• London 1843
• Paris 1716
• Africa 1787
• Australia Southeast 1844

Below are some images of this application in use (in the Google Earth program you can zoom in on and rotate the earth):

This post first appeared on AHA Today.