Posted on 04/09/2018 12:53:13 PM PDT by NRx
1911- William H Taft is President. Both the income tax and Federal Reserve Bank are a couple years off. Motor cars are still mostly the odd play things of the rich. Most folks use coal to heat their home and gas to light it. Air conditioning does not exist. People apparently did know how to dress well. On the downside, life expectancy is 47.
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“Somebody help me out; at ~7:30, what is that rocking device on the boat - some kind of pump??”
If I’m not mistaken it is part of the steam engine. I believe the steam is working the whatever you call it which is in turn turning the shafts that spin the side paddle wheels.
Indeed. Kind of ruined it for me, like a cheesy laughtrack.
Noticed the John Ericsson statue, with him holding the USS Monitor. It stands in Battery Park.
Noticed the John Ericsson statue, with him holding the USS Monitor. It stands in Battery Park.
-PJ
Yes, the sound bothered me too, so I turned it down. But, I don’t like them colorizing old movies, either...
“Walking Beam” steam engine. Pretty much old fashioned even for 1911, but still being built for river craft until the 1940’s.
I thought I spotted a paddle wheeler in the beginning. Also old fashioned for 1911.
I think it depended where you were. Most of the country was agricultural, and people generally ate pretty healthily, if they ate less varied or “fancy” diets.
My grandmother would have been 21 years old when this film was made, left largely orphaned and ill-cared for from the age of 12, married at 16, and having borne three children. She lived to be 94 despite childhood malaria and one pregnancy/childbirth that almost killed her and affected her for life.
But the work to live back then for everyone involved a lot of physical exercise that people don’t get now. Just running a household was enormously different for women, in terms of sheer physical labor. While that could be detrimental depending on economic status, in many cases it was probably healthy and strengthening.
(And I would suggest that mental/emotional health was generally superior.)
Bump
bfl
In 1911 they were just starting the big transition from horses to cars. Ten years later, horses would be much rarer.
That was the first commercially-released major motion picture with sound, but people were syncing sound to film for decades before that.
Fair enough. Didn’t think of that, but illustrative of the point overall.
In 1911 my paternal grandfather was a five year old, in Panola County, MS. He once told me that, whenever an automobile would come into town, all the kids would chase it to get a good look. They were that rare.
I like how they corrected the film for frame rate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film of that age with natural movement. That adjustment really brings those scenes to life.
Every adult in that film was born in the nineteenth century, and some of them lived to see the moon landings on television.
Based on the apparent age of the one-legged man on crutches at 2:20, it is probable he is a Civil War amputee.
I wondered about that - I almost qualified my original statement with you point. Of course it then begs the question: was the sound that was “added” to this video the actual sound? If so, cool.
I first saw this last year at MOMA in the basement, in a completely deserted hallway with a floor to ceiling screen. You could walk right up to it and it was like being there in old New York.
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