Historical Maps – Now Viewable in Other Language Versions of Google Earth
Frank Taylor
The popular Rumsey historical maps, which were released in early November, are now available in the other localized versions of Google Earth for French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese. Initially, these maps were only available in the English versions of GE. The Rumsey historical maps, when turned on, overlay their approximate location on Earth. You must be using Google Earth 4 (download here) or you will not see this layer. Go to the “Featured Content Layer” and open the folder. Look for the “Rumsey Historical Maps” and open that folder as well. Turn on the map that interests you. The “Map Finder” option shows the locations of the different maps. You can then turn on each map and they will be overlayed in GE. The maps are “regionated”, which means they will load more detail as you get closer (the map images were scanned at a very high resolution). See Rumsey’s Google blog entry about the maps.
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.
