Post Your Pictures, Then Take A Walk Through History

Imagine standing on a street corner and being able to see what it looked like 20, 50 or even 100 years ago. You could see how it's evolved or, perhaps, stayed the same.

That's what the website Historypin is like — a photographic trip down memory lane of a specific location. It takes modern photos of places and superimposes vintage pictures of the same location over them.

Historypin has already collected 55,000 pictures, videos and audio files since it started last year.

Nick Stanhope is the CEO of the British non-profit behind Historypin, and he tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz the site is a new way to do something people have always done.

"What an amazing idea that we're really most of the time doing the same kinds of things as our ancestors," Stanhope says. "Obviously technology has changed ... but a lot of what's recorded on Historypin is just ordinary people going about their daily business — which is actually very similar through the ages rather than drastically different."

There's also an app for mobile devices, which uses GPS to find content that's been added around your vicinity. "We want people to share history as it happens and as it continues to happen," Stanhope says.

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