I always enjoy discovering period industrial films explaining then cutting-edge technologies–how to process Technicolor film, how to record and press 78 RPM records etc. Above I’ve posted a 1937 mini-doc explaining the process by which a radio show transmits from the studio to homes across the country. It’s quite niftily
The LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, one of the most magnificent non-rigid airships (aka ‘Dirigible’ or ‘blimps’) ever produced, made an appearance over New York City at the completion of its twenty-one day round-the-world flight (which was sponsored by William Randolph Hearst) on August 29, 1929. The city stopped in its tracks,
When I was a kid I taught myself to play piano by using the odd, ancient first-digital-music-delivery-system- ever thing known as a piano roll. Simply put, piano rolls are a rolled sheet of paper with cuts in it representing individual notes which, when run through what is known as a
The astoundingly beautiful super-sonic aircraft known as the Concorde had its first commercial flight in 1976 and was retired in 2003. Why? Because of high operating costs, expensive travel prices and debris on a runway that resulted in a fatal crash killing all on board in 2003. (It wasn’t the
Before the Production Code came along in 1933 and imposed strict moral policing on all matters, homosexuality was often to be found in movies. The Pre-Code era generally preferred to offer up the ‘pansy’ or ‘sissy’ in a playful, caricature-ish way. Somehow this doesn’t seem now to be patronizing–at least
The only thing better than docs about old airplanes are old docs about old airplanes…or in this case ‘airships’, the fancy word for ‘Dirigibles’ which was the longer word for ‘blimps’. I haven’t watched this yet so can make no great claims for it, but I can’t imagine it isn’t
Hard to believe, but one-hundred years ago the future of air travel was thought to be found in what was known as the “Airship’, the fancy word for clumsy word ‘Dirigible’. We now know these bizarre aeronautical devices as ‘blimps’ and what we know of them is usually confined to
Here’s part two of the British-Pathe short film that I posted yesterday, showing us London in all its glory in 1950. But is it really showing us the whole story? My friend Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of the excellent, long-running JazzWax blog, pointed out to me
Here’s a lovely look at post-war London–1950 to be exact–as pictured in a British-Pathe travelogue, narrated by Rex Harrison, who I suspect was between divorces at the time and needed the easy money. I was last in London a year ago and was surprised how very much like London it
The Ferris wheel was the invention of a man named, well, George Washington Ferris. Come on, what did you think his name was going to be. Gustave Eiffel? It was designed for the 1893 Chicago Worlds Exposition, the first such exposition since the one in Paris five years earlier which