BOSTON - Instead of a compass, intrepid explorer Rachel Mead uses an ingenious digital tool named Atlascope to wander through long-vanished streets and neighborhoods of Boston, Cambridge and adjacent suburbs.
Designed by the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center in the Boston Public Library and free to the public, Atlascope has digitalized 101 cumbersome street atlases of Boston and neighboring cities from 1873 to 1938 so they can be accessed on computers and cell phones to guide viewers through the past.
Like the surveyor who discovered the ruins of Pompeii 16 centuries after it was buried in volcanic ash, Mead, the center's public engagement and interpretation coordinator, has also discovered forgotten lives.