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Rancho Geranium: 1936

November 1936. "Window of farmhouse living room. Mercer County, Illinois. Hired man lives in house on farm that was formerly residence of owner-operator." Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

November 1936. "Window of farmhouse living room. Mercer County, Illinois. Hired man lives in house on farm that was formerly residence of owner-operator." Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

 

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No wonder Dave and tterrace are tired

The answer from tterrace to IllinoisBoy reminded me of something I've been meaning to mention. Not sure the average Shorpy.com viewer realizes how many photos the Shorpy crew must have to wade through to find their wonderful offerings.

Over 30 years ago, I was working at an engineering firm outside D.C. and one of the suits there wanted to see every public-domain photo of hurricane damage. So I went to the Library of Congress, first to the old building, and then to the LoC Jefferson (I think) building across the street, to see what they had.

They had about a million filing cabinets with sorted and labeled plates, prints and negs, and I, of course, when shown all that said, "To heck with it."

Same with the Pentagon's photo collection. I used to go to their photo lab at Bolling AFB, and there were three or four Navy guys in civvies digitizing all their imagery using flatbed desk scanners. The director said they had over 5 million images to scan and classify. I said, "With those few guys scanning one by one, how long's that gonna take?!?!?" and the director said, "We figure about 250 years."

Of course, fast and automated scanning came out and that stuff is probably all online already, but it's still a lot of imagery to wade through. So thanks to the Shorpy.com team!!!

Further Information?

I'm very curious if there is any further information regarding this photo or the collection?

My great x3 grandfather homesteaded in Mercer County IL in the early 1850's. For several generations my family continued to farm just outside of New Windsor until the early 1980's.

[It's part of this collection at the Library of Congress. -tterrace]

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