On 03/20/2012 05:52 PM, Daniel Schwen wrote:
GoogleEarth supports tile-based overlays through KML files. This is the closest thing to what I think you want to do (overlay the old maps over new cartographic material). I don't see this happening in OSM though.
What I remembered was http://www.npemap.org.uk/ where old British NPE maps have been scanned and stitched together in a zoomable web interface. In my dreams, this was based on OpenLayers, but in reality this website turns out to be a more primitive solution.
But perhaps I'm not so mistaken after all. From the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeds if I click the coordinate in the upper left, I arrive at http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Leeds%C2%B6ms=53_47_59_N... where one of the alternatives is "Ordnance Survey NPE 1:50000 (England / Wales), 1945-1955 (via OpenStreetMap)", http://ooc.openstreetmap.org/?zoom=15&lat=53.799722&lon=-1.549167&am...
OOC stands for out-of-copyright maps, so this is where I should go. Maybe this only concerns OSM and not WMF at all? I think WMF with all its cooperations with libraries and other cultural institutions could help to liberate more old maps for OpenStreetMap.