Dr. Andrew Hudson-Smith has posted a blog entry at Digitally Distributed Environments with an image overlay for Google Earth showing a 1666 map of London. You can see this map overlay from 1666 
, and you can also compare it to the one he posted earlier for London in 1690 .
Also at Dr. Smith’s blog, is a really interesting entry about new technology for capturing a 3D city. They have created a movie you can watch showing preliminary results which is just really cool. Here’s the movie (Windows Media Player format, 4MBytes) The technology used is Raw Lidar Data (Light Detection And Ranging) – see Lidar.com for more info. It reminds me of side-looking radar only with better resolution. This kind of data is not ready for GE use yet, but it won’t be long before future versions of GE start looking much more like reality.
Here is a blog entry on other buildings from Dr. Hudson-Smith.
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
I tried both these overlays of London (1666 and 1690)in google earth. On the 1690 map the overlay is noticable but all the lettering is a blur; I can’t make out hardly any of the street names at all. On the 1666 map the overlay is so see-thru I can’t discern it from the regular google map of London present day underneath it; it’s too transparent. Am I doing something wrong?