In the 1960s, the US sent a series of spy satellites around the world in what was called the "keyhole" satellite program. The camera's used were regular film-based cameras with one shooting forward, one downward and one facing back. Once the film roll was completed, the roll was ejected and shot to the earth and a parachute would deploy once it reached the atmosphere. Here US airforce aircraft were scrambled and they would fly close and somehow hook the parachute lines even before the package descended into the lower atmosphere! It is truly mind boggling logistics.
Now this film was processed and someone digitized all the content and much of it is now declassified (actually done in Clinton's regime) and is now available freely on the USGS website. Now there was a company called Keyhole Inc. which presumably saw this data as a way of looking at the world. It was bought up by Google and keyhole became Google Earth - the K in KML still stands for keyhole. Sadly one would have thought the keyhole imagery would be available via Google Earth and it is not.
I downloaded a few of the large TIFF files, georeferenced them after uploading them to Wikimedia Commons and importing it into Wikimaps Warper (Note that you should give enough time between upload and import for the thumbnailers to complete their jobs). I found some truly amazing views of places that I was familiar with - the Bangalore environs and the Kabini area (before the dams were constructed). The possibilities for environmental change studies is quite endless but much of the imagery is Extremely hard to geolocate and compare with modern scenery.
BEST VIEWED ON A LAPTOP/DESKTOP SCREEN: Here are view of northern Bangalore (another), southern Bangalore, and the Kabini region.
IF you are very familiar with the terrain of a region, I encourage you to look in the USGS site and georeference some portions on the Wikimaps Warper for more people to be able to study the past.
- Jeffrey Richelson (1984) The keyhole satellite program. Journal of Strategic Studies, 7(2):121-153. DOI: 10.1080/01402398408437182
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