Friday, February 05, 2016

Your Source for Vintage Map Tiles


I noticed yesterday that Wikimedia is using Tim Waters' Map Warper to geo-rectify old historic maps. This means that map developers have another great resource for accessing map tile schemes of vintage maps from around the world.

Today I used some of the geo-rectified vintage maps on Wikimedia to put together this little collection of old historical maps of Berlin.

The NYPL Digtial Collection and the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection are two other great resources to access map tile schemes of old historic maps.

If you view a vintage map on the NYPL Map Warper website and click on the 'Export' tab you can find the map's tile scheme URL, which can then be used with most of the popular mapping platforms, such as the Google Maps API, CartoDB, Mapbox and Leaflet.

Wiki Media and the NYPL Digital Collections both use Map Warper. This means that if you want to access the map tile scheme of an historical map on Wiki Media you just need to follow the same steps - click on the 'Export' tab and copy the map's tile scheme URL.

On the David Rumsey Historical Maps website you need to select a vintage map and then click on the 'Embed OGC WMTS tiles' link. Next you need to select the 'source code' link and find and copy the map tile scheme URL.

So, if you are looking for map tile schemes of old vintage maps from around the world, you could start with these links:

David Rumsey Geoeferenced Maps
NYPL Map Warper
Wikimaps Warper

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