Dating Historic Images
Dating historic images captured primarily with digital photography. Our handy little cameras download images onto our computers directly into folders with the exact date and time. What about fifty years ago? Or one hundred? Or even one hundred and fifty years ago? We can hope that people recorded the date and event on their photographs, but most did not.
So, what can you do with an old photograph and no date? Well, you can deduce that date, and our site is going to help you! Photographs are filled with evidence that tells a story about that snapshot in time. What is that evidence? It is our built environment; it is the clothing we wear; it is the tools and machinery that we use; it is the natural landscape. Every feature you see in an historic image is an important clue to its date. Look at the photograph below. A myriad of important features can lead us closer to that elusive date: houses, traffic lights, utility poles, diner, road signs, street pavement, cars trees, sidewalks, curbsÉ the list goes on. The information provided in this site will help you identify the dates of the features in your historic image.
