The Amsterdam Time Machine (ATM) is a public research resource on the history of Amsterdam. It is currently coordinated by the CREATE research program at the University of Amsterdam and powered by a consortium of people and institutions in academia, cultural heritage and industry.
The Amsterdam Time Machine (ATM) started in 2017 as a hub for linked historical data on Amsterdam. To digitally unlock Amsterdam’s past, we bring together efforts in the fields of academia, cultural heritage, business, and computer science. Ultimately, the web of information on people, places, relationships, events, and objects will unfold in time and space through geographical and 3D representations. While we’re working on that, we’d like to provide access to the three building blocks of the Time Machine: a Linked Data cloud visualisation called ALiDa; historical Maps and other geo reference data; and 3D reconstructions. Read more.
In the Time Machine, users will be able to travel back in time and navigate the city on the levels of neighborhoods, streets, houses, rooms, ultimately zooming in on the pictures that adorned the walls. The systematic linkage of datasets from heterogeneous sources allows users to retrieve historical information, support public interfaces, and ask new questions on, for instance, cultural events, everyday life, social relations, or the use of public space in the city of Amsterdam.
ATM uses state-of-the-art computational methods and techniques, and it will be carefully annotated with regards to issues of uncertainty and fuzziness that are inherent to historical data.