back to article Blighty laid bare as historic aerial snaps archive goes online

Today sees the launch of Britain From Above - a seriously impressive archive of 16,000 aerial views of Blighty taken between 1919 to 1953. The images were acquired for the nation in 2007 when aerial photography outfit Aerofilms fell on hard times, and following "a painstaking process of conservation and cataloguing", can now …

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  1. Tom 7

    Connection to 192.168.89.45 failed.

    needs a little TLC!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Connection to 192.168.89.45 failed.

      Working now. Another damn site that requires registration for you to be able to use it properly. Sure I get that registration is needed for commenting and contributing but why just to zoom in on a picture?

      Fail.

  2. Scarborough Dave
    Meh

    Yep!

    Same Here!

  3. Steve 13
    FAIL

    it's leaking

    he following error was encountered while trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/

    Connection to 192.168.89.45 failed.

    The system returned: (110) Connection timed out

    It shouldn't be giving out internal IP addresses just because to many reg readers have clicked the link.

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: it's leaking

      Still spannered at present.

  4. DuncanL
    Facepalm

    Ah ; the old favourite sight of a new site collapsing under the weight of users!

    Wouldn't happen if you outsourced it to the cloud... or something. ;)

  5. Tank boy
    Happy

    Too bad

    Not quite close enough to see all the bad teeth. Damn.

    1. Kwac

      Re: Too bad

      I'd downvote/upvote if I knew what you were talking about.

    2. Severen
      Trollface

      Re: Too bad

      "Not quite close enough to see all the bad teeth. Damn."

      It's an early example of Britain experimenting the U.S. method of High School portraiture where, in order to fit the whole person into the frame, it must be an aerial photograph.

      1. perlcat
        Devil

        Re: U.S. method of High School portraiture

        BURN.

        I like. Of course, at the US High school I went to, it wasn't that bad. After all, not one of us weighed over 15 stone.

  6. zaax

    still spannered

  7. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    "Who will find the first sunbathing lovely of the 1930s?"

    You just showed us the beach at Blackpool. I call -that- one.

  8. Miffo

    Can someone please draw some parallels with Google's and that other one's spy plane stuff (can't remember the story now) and what happened in the 1930's in an amusing way? Thanks.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    broken the internet?

    RROR

    The requested URL could not be retrieved

    The following error was encountered while trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/

    Connection to 192.168.89.45 failed.

    The system returned: (110) Connection timed out

    The remote host or network may be down. Please try the request again.

    Your cache administrator is webadmins@scran.ac.uk.

    well done Lester and El Reg

  10. Dazzz

    Its sort of working now, but a bit slow in places.

  11. frank ly

    Re. Mystery Location

    On the picture shown, is that a barrage balloon in the upper right corner?

    I'm also surprised that the location hasn't been identified.

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: Re. Mystery Location

      Giant Moth.

      So it must be Tokyo.

      Oh, wait...

    2. PT

      Re: Re. Mystery Location

      The water tower at upper left suggests somewhere with no hills nearby, so perhaps east coast.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It works

    Just V E R Y S L O O O O O W L L L L Y Y Y Y Y Y Y ..................

  13. Bill 2

    Nope

    Not working again. I will leave it a few months and come back when all the fuss has died down I think.

  14. Chris Sake
    Black Helicopters

    Shades of the London Olympics

    I was enamoured by the caption of the photograph of Wembley Stadium by the Daily Fail:

    <blockquote please>Wembley Stadium hosts the 1935 FA Cup final, which Sheffield Wednesday won by beating West Bromwich Albion 4-2. The Cierva autogyro in the foreground was flown by Scotland Yard, experimenting with air observation to monitor crowds.</blockquote please>

    In 1935!

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Shades of the London Olympics

      Probably took three weeks to get the pictures back from the chemist though.

      I'm joking, they did have cameras in planes in the First World War and the pictures didn't take that long to develop.

  15. Tony S

    It's alive!

    It is actually working. However, they have a message on the front page advising that:

    "Launch day - high web traffic

    We are currently experiencing a very high volume of traffic due to the popularity of the site on launch day - today, 25 June. We apologise if you are having any difficulties accessing our web pages. Please try again later, when the problems should be resolved"

  16. Onionstar

    The mystery image is of Central Parade in Herne Bay with the Ship Inn visible on the left of the shot

    1. Imsimil Berati-Lahn
      Thumb Up

      I concur with your analysis.

      Well spotted that person!

      Herne Bay central parade between East Street and Bank Street.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Ummm no it's not.

      It's me Grans ouse, on the street near the coast in England.

      Eeer Bah Gum Ladde!

  17. Tyfy

    Location in the Photo

    I am fairly sure the mystery photo is Central Parade in Herne Bay, Kent

  18. NightFox

    At least this will provide a more up-to-date alternative to the satellite imagery on Apple's iOS6 maps.

  19. LinkOfHyrule
    Joke

    Our system is currently experiencing an extraordinary level of traffic. Please bear with us.

    Okay, I didn't realise I had to please a bear with you guys - how exactly do we please him? Sounds a bit risky if you ask me! I only wanted to look at some old photos not be involved in this weirdness!

  20. Hollerith 1

    Lost Villages of medieval England

    Only had time for a peek, due to slow loading, but will try later. Aerial photos taken in the 1930s and 1940s set the world of medieval history reeling with delight, as the remains of abandoned medieval villages (yes, and some Roman remains) were visible in low-angled light. The depopulation of England in the series of plagues after 1348 meant many villages were utterly lost, sometimes even the names gone from local memory. By using the photographs, archaeologists could find and excavate sites undisturbed for centuries, and huge amounts of important information was recovered. Being an ex-mediaevalist, I have a soft spot for these photos.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Don't always need photos ...

      Many years ago, after a very dry summer, I was amazed to see the outlines of some sort of cloistered building at the foot of Harrow Hill, from it's summit. A friends mum, who had lived nearby, and whose mum had lived there back to the 1870s was adamant that nothing had stood there in (their) living memory.

  21. Graham Wilson
    Unhappy

    Disappointing - Resolution far too low for aerial photographs.

    The 'Britain from Above' web site is very disappointing. It's good these images are now online but they're aerial photographs so why has the site posted such low quality photographs? Plate cameras have enormous resolution and even ordinary film cameras are capable of much better resolution than the photos posted here.

    Moreover there's only the gallery and intermediate resolution images available which is hardly satisfactory--the image of St Paul's I checked was only 820 x 649px! Shame they'd not copied the Library of Congress method of presenting photos where multiple image sizes are available from thumbnails through to large TIF files of 7500 x 6072px (file sizes typically 80-200MB). For example, even in this 150-year old image from the LOC collection the large 7500 x 6072px TIF file is 86.9MB:

    http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/item/cwp2003000014/PP/

    and there are much larger files than this one amongst other images.

    You might well ask why anyone would want such a large TIF file from 150 years ago. Well, I chose this image example to illustrate just this point. In the long line of soldiers in the photograph, there's one guy in the back row (towards the RHS) that stands out from the others by what he's doing (download the large TIF to find out). The fact is unless we'd had access to this large TIF then his actions would most likely have gone unnoticed (as he's hardly recognizable in the lower resolution images). As this example attests, when it comes to historical images, we need very bit of resolution we can get.

    The quality of Library of Congress images is, by and large, excellent as they're scanned with a resolution that's close to the Nyquist limit--or at least within spitting distance of it (also the dynamic range/linearity is excellent). Scanning at the Nyquist limit (two times the smallest discernible transition) ensures that most of the data is captured from the original.

    As far as quality goes, most images on the net are pretty terrible, and unfortunately 'Britain from Above' is following in that mould (a la British Museum, Imperial War Museum, etc., etc., the images from all of which are unquestioningly substandard). The net and new hi-res displays* mean that people now have the capability to examine historical and other images in truly fine detail as never before but the web sites are choosing not to make the images available. It seems to me that there should be much more uproar over this.

    _

    * Only a week or two ago El Reg had an article on the ultra high def TV standard which incidentally is 7680 x 4320px--a huge increase in definition over 1080i hi-def. Clearly, hi-res is the way technology is going, thus the quality of web sites must be comparable or users will lose interest.

    1. perlcat
      Facepalm

      Re: Disappointing - Resolution far too low for aerial photographs.

      Bitch, bitch, bitch.

      Shut up and look at the pretty pictures. They didn't cost you anyhing, why do you have to be an ass about it?

      1. Graham Wilson

        @perlcat - - Re: Disappointing - Resolution far too low for aerial photographs.

        Because:

        It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us. ... [Isaac Disraeli]

        There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority. ... [Orison S.Marden]

        1. perlcat
          Facepalm

          Re: @perlcat - - Disappointing - Resolution far too low for aerial photographs.

          Wah, wah, wah.

          It was free. Stop looking at it if you hate it. Spend your own money to make your own if you have the need. Call your elected official and offer to help if you want to make yourself useful. Fix it if you own it.

          Bitching about something you have no control over and are not charged anything for the privilege of using in public forums just looks whiny and pathetic, no matter how you church it up with quotations. All's it shows is that you have the power of wikipedia at your fingertips in a pretense of thinking ignoble thoughts in a noble way. Devil, scripture, own purposes, you know the drill.

          Since I can't be bothered to come up with my own quotations, I guess your quest for excellence in smart-assed repertoire will just have to suffer.

          Cheers!

    2. Martin Budden Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: Disappointing - Resolution far too low for aerial photographs.

      "You might well ask why anyone would want such a large TIF file from 150 years ago. Well, I chose this image example to illustrate just this point. In the long line of soldiers in the photograph, there's one guy in the back row (towards the RHS) that stands out from the others by what he's doing (download the large TIF to find out)."

      I waited AGES for it to download, and what did I see? Just some guy looking towards the camera while all the other soldiers are looking away from the camera. Please tell me that's not all it is - I was really hoping for something interesting.

  22. Martin H Watson

    In a hundred years time...

    ...our descendants will be waiting keenly for the release of 2012 StretView images, only to find that they were all scrapped for data protection reasons. Please don't let that happen.

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