GEODESIC BY DESIGN LTD

Applications Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow different systems to talk to each other, turning data into reusable building blocks that any application can call over the web. This app is a great example. It pulls together 6 public APIs to give users the ability to understand their surroundings in historical context, by way of a simple to use, mobile friendly app.

The app is built on a foundation of digitised and geo-referenced Ordnance Survey maps dating back to the 19th century, provided by the National Library of Scotland (NLS). These maps are a testament to the skill and dedication of the cartographers of their time – hand drawn in pen and ink, they are works of art in themselves. Open the layers sidebar and slide the fader to compare between then and now.

Added to this are more than 400 thousand carefully curated records from the National Heritage List for England, covering listed buildings, scheduled monuments, battlefields and more. And don’t forget the crowdsourced historic layers from Open Street Map, Wikipedia and the Open Plaques project. Pull the map up on your mobile, toggle ‘find my location’ and let your GPS guide you on a journey into the past.

Now contains the digitised street plan of John Rocque’s 1746 map of London georeferenced and digitised by Patrick Mannix, Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).