The second of today’s posts featuring old photos is a series containing 95 photos taken during the Civil War. The Civil War has become sort of an abstract event for me. It’s one of those things that I’ve read about, learned about, researched, etc. – but it doesn’t quite seem real. It’s too difficult to imagine a time when people in America owned other people, a time when a war was fought in my own...
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As I’ve mentioned previously, I love old photos. For that reason, today I’m doing two posts featuring old historical photos of the United States, the first of which is a series of photos by 1800s photographer Timothy O’Sullivan. (The second post features American Civil War photos) This series features photos of the American West in the 1860s and 70s. It’s basically exactly how I pictured it in my head – vast,...
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This is one of the coolest things I’ve come across in a long time: an atlas of the United States created for the blind – in 1837. No ink was used in the making of this atlas, as the content is created by way of embossing so the blind could feel their way around. It was made for children at the New England Institute for the Education of the Blind in Boston, and is pretty awesome. It’s wild that this is from 1837, I suppose...
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I love stumbling across collections of old photographs, and this series depicting the streets of London in 1876-1877 is really cool. The photos were posted on the Flickr stream of the British Library of Political and Economic Science and give us a glimpse into what life was like in 1870s London. As far as I can tell, people took beards way more seriously back then, which, as a bearded man myself, I can respect. Also, in one of the pictures,...
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Generally speaking, I post things because I find them interesting or think they’re cool. These Cold War spy gadgets, however, are on another level. Back in the day, these were the weapons with which the most powerful governments in the world carried out an information-collecting war. Some of them are pretty impressive, as I usually think of spy gadgets to be a more modern phenomenon. They were able to make the cameras and guns...
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Below are some fantastic historical photos of New York City from the New York Historical Archives. I don’t know what it is about old photographs, but they make me feel connected to the past somehow, as if it suddenly becomes real when I can see the faces and places. These are particularly cool photos, as many of them show the construction of bridges and buildings we’re so used to seeing nowadays. For some reason I never think...
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