Google Earth Tour of Franklin Locations
On the front page of Philadelphia Reflections is found a button which will download Google Earth, and if you follow instructions on the left column, will give you a satellite tour of every bloglet on the site. At least, it will when we get it finished; it's only about half complete at present. If you are unfamiliar with this approach, we suggest you download the Earth program from the Google site and get acquainted by locating your own house, or Independence Hall, or the Vatican.
In addition, every Topic (listed in the left hand column of the front page of Philadelphia Reflections) will contain a button which generates a tour of the geoTags of that particular Topic, providing there are three or more such tags. You will generally get the best results from tours developed by unknown authors if you turn off ALL of the layers provided in the lower section of the left-hand panel of Google Earth, although you might turn them on, one at a time, if you want to enhance the effects. Generally speaking, the route of Interstate 95 seems a little out of place among the local wanderings of Ben Franklin.
|
|
Take a satellite tour of nearly every place Ben Franklin ever visited. |
You should also become familiar with KMZ files and KML files. Keyhole markup language gives instructions to Google Earth, allowing authors like Bob Florig to organize tours of a particular subject. KML files are quite large, so they get compressed to make them easier to send over the Internet. Compressed files of KML are designated KMZ, referring to Winzip the decompressor. Other decompressors will often work, too, especially Stuffit for Apple users. The extra step of decompression is a nuisance, and it is possible to have the file do things itself, to become known as a self-extracting file. Self extracting files are often, but not always, designated as EXE files.
You are here invited to take a tour of every site Benjamin Franklin is known to have visited, as if you were an interplanetary alien riding a flying saucer. Double-click the blue link to download a copy of Google Earth if you don't already have one, followed by a self-extracting KMZ file constructed by Bob Florig and used with his kind permission.
There's one other feature you should know about, called overlays. Bob took an 18th Century map of Philadelphia and substituted it for the satellite map of contemporary central Philadelphia. That lets you see Philadelphia as Franklin saw it, and by changing overlays, also allows you to see the little red-brick buildings which remain standing among the skyscrapers. Both he and I are uncertain about the copyright status of the old maps, and may have to remove them if the author identifies himself and protests.
(1326)
