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- Which explains why...
- Paper drives
- Pregnant Marian
- Paper drive
- The 1942 scrap paper drives were very successful.
- Delivery Wagon
- All you need to make you Go
- All of That
- Egad
- Watch your step
- Baseball players or hoods?
- Still there
- Wrapped power pole
- Hollywood Bad Girl?
- Nonelectronic
- Wonderful talent
- A Bubbling Cup
- Knickers
- These fountains
- Germs? What Germs?
- Just Made It
- What's that guy doing?
- Long-lasting technology
- The only thing missing
- Not so easy on the eyes
- Lighting adjustment
- Cut and paste
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- Light fixture cages
- 67th Street
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Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.
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Today's Top 5
Homeward Bound: 1938
Submitted by Dave on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 2:51am.
September 1938. Capels, West Virginia. "Miner waiting for ride home. Each miner pays twenty-five cents a week to owner of car." Medium format negative by Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
Salt of the Earth
Submitted by Anonymous Tipster on Thu, 03/18/2010 - 7:22am.
Living in Western Pennsylvania, I've known miners like him and they're honest and real to a fault. If we had more people like him today the world would be a much better place.
Two Times
Submitted by Kilroy on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 10:10am.
I wonder how this man would feel if he knew he would appear on Shorpy twice in one week 72 years later.
[This fellow has not appeared previously. -Dave]
I've been in some bad cabs in my life.
Submitted by opa6x57 on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 9:51am.
But this is ridiculous!
In today's money $3.84
Submitted by Anonymous DC Tip... on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 8:07am.
I pay just about the same amount to public transit twice a day, 5 days a week.
Patches on patches
Submitted by Speechless on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 7:28am.
Poor guy! This is an image of what it is to be the guy trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps while your bootstraps are frayed and threadbare.
You can just see how exhausted he is from the way he's sitting there. Looking at his clothes, the patches have holes in them, the gaiters held up by safety pins, the boots with the hole so big his toes are showing through.
When I think how hard people worked just a few generations past, I'm full of gratitude and shame. Would they recognize our lives today?
Used
Submitted by Aarno Junkkari on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 7:16am.
How tired and exhausted he looks! His shoes are worn out. The car also has seen better days. A fantastic photo!
THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG
Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.
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Today's Top 5