Photos From History Thread

[TheCracker]

I'd imagine that for most Europeans, at least the non-Spanish ones, a vacation in Mexico means Cuncun. Which i guess isn't a great representation of the rest of the country.

 

[Cano]

I'd imagine that for most Europeans, at least the non-Spanish ones, a vacation in Mexico means Cuncun. Which i guess isn't a great representation of the rest of the country.

Cancun dude. And no, it isn't at all, specially the touristic zones lol. It's still a delicious place to be, was there two years ago, but we roadtripped our way over there touching several cities and touristic points in the way 👍

 

[Michael88]

Germans in World War One using the worlds first widely issued modern anti matériel rifle. (Against early tanks and armored machine gun positions)

 

[Heldenzeit]

I can't imagine the kick that would produce against ones shoulder. Or the noise it would make!

 

[CinnamonOD]

San Diego (L) - Tijuana (R) Border

Photo from 2007, I can tell for Genaro Lopez, the photo was taken facing to the east.

It has indeed changed, there is another wall now, the street on the mexican side now has a concrete surface instead of asphalt, there are not as many signs, and the side of the street going to the east was rebuilt because there were too many accidents there.

This street is one of the only 4 or 5 ways where the south of the peninsula is connected with the rest of the country.

On the U.S. side, you can see those buildings and that big silo, honestly, I don't know what that is, it could be a Border Patrol HQ.

If you look further into the U.S. you'll see a shopping mall, it's called "Las Americas" and, ironically, you barely see any hispanic people there (I worked there last summer).

If the photo was facing more to the left, you would see that San Diego has their density problems, too, and if it was facing more to the right, you would be able to see Tijuana's economic sector (banks, restaurants, shopping malls, fancy buildings, etc.).

Fun fact: My house is not too far from where this photo was taken.

Oh, those houses at the hill in the background, if you ever visit this city, do not even think about going there.

San Ysidro Crossing

It is the busiest land border crossing in the world

Yes it is, nobody really cares, after 9/11 happened, the wait time to cross increased from 10-20 minutes as a maximum to 1-2 hours minimum, then it was rebuilt from scratch in 2012, and now the wait times are closer to 20 minutes on average.

👍 Done that crossing. So weird to literally step from one culture to another. You do it in Europe all the time but you just don't get such a change in culture in such a short distance with no graduation between.

Was almost 23 years ago when i did go to Mexico, so i imagine there has been some change, but stepping from the almost clinically clean and well ordered San Diego to the chaos and dirt of Tijuana was just bizarre. The landscape we passed through in a taxi from the border to downtown Tijuana was, i can only describe as, 'post-apocalyptical'.

It has changed, the only thing now that gives the city a bad image are the homeless and cholos.

As a matter of fact, the whole downtown sector is being rebuilt (streets, building faces and structure)

It has changed, but not as much as you'd expect. @AJHG1000 could shed some light in that...

The nice places at the eastern part of the city are basically gone, there are houses all over the place and the criminals rule that place, it used to snow once or twice every year there, it looked nice, but now there's barely any rain there.

Last time I was in Mexico we actually went through Tecate. Not really a tourist town, but it was a little nicer than TJ.

They have lots of beer there.

Not a tourist town, yeah, but it's got their attractions like La Rumorosa, for example (The place where Richard Hammond was shown driving the Mastretta MXT)

Too bad Tijuana is about to reach Tecate.

The entire north border isn't what I would call touristy, unless you get to the Californias

The Californias and Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, because of the closeness to the border and nice weather, other border cities in the north are Police vs Criminals all day (Puerto Peñasco is not a border city, but it's close to it)

All I know about Tijuana is from jokes in 1990s The Simpsons. I'm sure it's changed since then.

Curiously, the Tijuana shown in Kamp Krusty does not resemble that time's city (Maybe the post revolutionary time but not the 80's-90's)

I'd imagine that for most Europeans, at least the non-Spanish ones, a vacation in Mexico means Cuncun. Which i guess isn't a great representation of the rest of the country.

It is not, Cancún is one of the safest places in the country, just like the cities where the most powerful druglords live, because that's where they go to get fun, everywhere else, it's a holy mess.

As I am talking about Tijuana, I might aswell

This is the earliest picture taken in this city, it is from 1887, and it was just a ranch supposedly owned by a woman called Juana, everyone liked her and used to call her "Tia Juana", when it was officially considered a city in 1889, it recieved the name Zaragoza, but everyone referred to it as Tijuana, and it eventually became the official name (1929)

Avenida Revolución in the late 1920's

Taken in the early 1930's. This pool was part of the Aguacaliente Casino, which had a lot of success, until former President Lázaro Cárdenas closed it and demolished it to build a school in it, nowadays, there are not only one school, but 7: most notably a High School named Lázaro Cárdenas, which is one of it's kind (Literally) and it has one of the highest education levels in the country (I graduated from that school)

The pool is still there, intact, with the fountain working.


Photo from the 1930's, showing the Alvaro Obregon School, now the zone's Cultural Center on the top of that hill.
This is so close to my house that I can literally go out of my house, walk two or three minutes, take a photo in this angle, come back and post it, might do it tomorrow, but it does not look like this anymore, I think the building is not visible.

 

[Lizard]

Germans in World War One using the worlds first widely issued modern anti matériel rifle. (Against early tanks and armored machine gun positions)

What is the model name of the gun?

 

[Wiegert]

What is the model name of the gun?

Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr. Came into service towards the end of the war, as the name suggests.

 

[Michael88]

I can't imagine the kick that would produce against ones shoulder. Or the noise it would make!

According to books the kick was so bad that it could seriously injure a mans shoulder if fired from the prone or fired by an inexperienced shooter. The round was very similar to the 50cal which is used in long range anti material rifles today, but the Mauser Tank rifle from WWI had no muzzle brake. A muzzle brake on a 50 reduces recoil by about 60%-70%.

 

[Cano]

Tijuana stuff

Duuuuuuude AWESOME post. But this:

This is the earliest picture taken in this city, it is from 1887, and it was just a ranch supposedly owned by a woman called Juana, everyone liked her and used to call her "Tia Juana", when it was officially considered a city in 1889, it recieved the name Zaragoza, but everyone referred to it as Tijuana, and it eventually became the official name (1929)​

​

That is an absolutely awesome fact and I did not know about it.

 

[D.Kadettdriver]

Hiram Maxim's huge biplane test rig (1893), powered by two 180 hp steam engines:

 

[Liquid]

First Midair Refuelling, 1923

First Passenger Jet, de Havilland Comet Prototype, 1949

NOTE: The square windows which led to the Comet disasters and ended British supremacy in aeroplane construction at a time when air travel was just about to become truly global.

First Passenger Jet Boeing, Boeing Dash 80, 1954

Boeing 747 Prototype, 1968

Good zoom on the photo. The launch customers for the 747 are scattered under the lettering.

 

[Legro]

Germany's first traffic lights on Potzdamer Platz in Berlin, which were built in 1924, 1936.

 

[Wiegert]

@Legro I was just watching a video of a guy touring Berlin while his German guide pointed out the replica version of those lights.


US soldier inspecting a pile of captured Goliath Sd.kfz 303 remote controlled tracked mines, C. 1945

 

[Rage Racer]

Kuomintang soldiers in Taiwan, 1951. Note: Soviet tank, German helmets, Czechslovakian machine gun and American SMG...

 

[Wiegert]

1933: A "tilt test" showing that London's double-decker buses weren't a tipping hazard (using sandbags as weights rather than actual passengers). 28 degrees being the target, with the gauge on the bus showing how much the suspension roll increases the angle of tilt.

 

[Liquid]

Random Dump

 

[W3H5]

Is that Hildog with a Gameboy?

And is it me or does Harrison Ford always look cool, no matter what?

 

[Liquid]

Is that Hildog with a Gameboy?

It is. A very 1990s photo.

 

[Liquid]

RMS Titanic survivors as taken from the RMS Carpathinia, the first ship to arrive at the scene of the disaster.

 

[D.Kadettdriver]

Auto polo:

 

[catamount39]

Auto polo:

Thank God that didn't catch on.

 

[Liquid]

Frankfurt-am-Main, c.1907-1911

These three photographs were all taken by pigeons, under the research of Julius Neubronner. The cameras were timed to simply go off at certain intervals. The photos above demonstrate where the pigeon was/what the pigeon was looking at, at the time the cameras went off.

This technology initially caught the interest of militaries around the world as a medium of aerial reconnissance but fell out of favour almost as soon as it began due to the perfection of aircraft by the end of the first world war.

 

[BobK]

Thank God that didn't catch on.

...and I'm thinking it's a shame nobody has revived it yet.

 

[W3H5]

It always makes my head trip to think that what we see in black and white photos is just and image, but for the people there at the time there were colours along with smells, sounds, temperatures and a whole host of other sensory experiences which we often overlook when glancing at a historical photo.

 

[HP]

I've been on GTP for years, I swear I have never seen this thread

Clearly I need to 'get out more' when I am online here

Love the pics, jumped online to send a couple of quick PM's and I ended up here for over an hour haha

 

[Crash]

Boeing 747 Prototype, 1968

Good zoom on the photo. The launch customers for the 747 are scattered under the lettering.

This plane is now sitting at a museum ~20 minutes south of where I live.

Frankfurt-am-Mein

And I do believe it's Frankfurt am Main.

 

[Liquid]

It always makes my head trip to think that what we see in black and white photos is just and image, but for the people there at the time there were colours along with smells, sounds, temperatures and a whole host of other sensory experiences which we often overlook when glancing at a historical photo.

Have a shot of New York in the 1940s.

I totally get what you mean though. There have been examples in previous posts of some excellent photography work before the 1940s. Some digitally colourised, some actual colour. It's an incredible warp to another world to see the past with such clarity and colour.

Rural Russia, 1909-15

Now, this I find very interesting indeed. You know how you see photos and videos of the past and because the resolution of that is so poor you have this weird idea that the real world back then looked similar? By that I mean it's hard to visualise the late 1800s and early 1900s with the same resolution and clarity as we do today thanks to the technology available back then.

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian chemist and photographer. He travelled across the spine of Russia documenting and photographing what he saw.

All of the following were taken between 1909 and 1915 in monochrome and were later colourised.

Sergey himself

Austro-Hungarian POWs

Switchman on the Trans-Siberian Railway

Jewish children with their teacher, Samarkand

Boxing, 1913

May 3rd 1913, Roy Campbell vs Dick Hyland.

Picture is coloured and restored.

This is the original.

Amsterdam, 1930s

Just some color photos from the 1930s, taken in Amsterdam:

And I do believe it's Frankfurt am Main.

Do pardon the typo.

 

[Beerz]

I've been on GTP for years, I swear I have never seen this thread

I've been here for 12 and 1/2 years and only noticed on November 20th, 2014.

 

[Liquid]

In fact, we've come a long way from the first colour photograph.

It's a tartan ribbon taken in 1861 by England's Thomas Sutton using a formula invented in 1855 by Scotland's James Maxwell.

An early French effort at colour photography. Taken in 1877 Louis Ducos du Hauron.

And one more from the rural Russian specialist, Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, with three different black and white filters showing the different levels required in creating a colour photograph. This one was taken in 1911.

If you are interested, the subject of the photograph is Alim Khan, the last Emir of Bukhara, a former sovereign state located in modern Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan but it was autonomously under the protection of the Russian crown by 1911.

 

[Liquid]

Rome, 1930

Wycombe, Bucks, 1928

Your local butcher.