-------- Original Message -------- Subject: The Brighton and Hove Historical Mapping Web Site Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:17:05 +0100 From: Timothy Langner <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: To: *The Brighton and Hove Historical Mapping Web Site* Hi there As part of a masters dissertation at the University of Portsmouth, into the spatial querying of historical maps online, I have created the above historical mapping web site, hosted at: http://tiger.iso.port.ac.uk:7785/www/geg50160.brightonandhove.maps. The site allows users to: * View historical maps of Brighton and Hove; * Search these historical maps, using indexes complied from the original maps and/or other gazetteers from the same period; * Choose a location on a map and then find out what exists at that location on other maps; * Pan around the maps and change their scale. The site is hosted in an Oracle database, using Oracle Spatial, with Oracle's MapViewer being used to output the maps to the Web Site. The original maps were georeferenced using ArcGIS. Although historical OS maps of Brighton and Hove already exist and are available to students through Edina, none of these were used to georeference the maps. In order to keep the site out of copyright, I manually created a world coordinate file using my own copy of OS 6" Sussex county series sheet, LXVI, published 1880. Without a copy of this map, the work would have been much more difficult to undertake. And were it no for the contributions and help of people on the carto-soc mailing list, who replied to a message I posted, I would not have known how to create the coordinate file. The projection itself, a Cassini county series projection, origin located at Ditchling Beacon, was created using information complied by Brian Adams and published in the extremely useful, Projections and Origins: Collected Writings of Brian Adams (published by the Charles Close society). In addition to that Russell Fox, retired OS librarian, confirmed a query I had with the projection and Cliff J Mugnier, who has also completed research into the country series projections, was helpful too. Once the database was created, additional work was completed using MapInfo, as this allowed direct access the Oracle database tables. I am intending to carry on the work and expand it once I finish my course at the University of Portsmouth. If you would be interested in find out more about this or collaborating on the project, then please get in contact. The work will probably have to be transferred to an open source solution as I am unable to afford the costs required to run the site using Oracle. This will also affect how the maps might be georeferenced in the future. Due to the amount of work required, the site features 11 maps (12 images) covering the central area of Brighton. For those that know Brighton this is roughly: * Church Street in the North; * Montpellier Road in the West; * The two piers in the South; * Rock Place in the East. The maps include, amongst others: * The map from Edward Cobby's "the Brighthelmston Directory for 1799" * Hadlow's 'Brighton Hove and Preston' from Robertson's 1895 "Delegates' Guide to Brighton" * Stanley Barnett's Graphia Street Plan of Brighton and Hove from c1931-1934 * Stadtplan Von Brighton from 1941, which was by the rather long named: Generalstab des Heeres. Abteilung für Kriegskarten und Vermessungswesen (IV. Militär-geographische) [translated as: General staff of the army. Department for war maps and surveyings. (IV. Military-Geographical)] Please try out this new site and let me know what you think. Whilst I do not have time to incorporate any changes into my work, I will keep a record of all comments, suggestions and problems you may encounter. Kind regards Tim Langner