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.
Vintage photos of:

January 1912. "The Flint Cotton Mill spinning room. Small girls are employed here but not in evidence this noon. Fall River, Massachusetts." View full size.

February 1908. "Lelouvier and driver in Werner car, at start of New York to Paris automobile race." The course was from Times Square to the Eiffel Tower via Alaska and Siberia. George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.

Syracuse varsity crew team at the boathouse with coach Ten Eyck circa 1908. Bain News Service glass negative. View full size.

October 1908. "Citizens Glass Co., Evansville, Indiana. Over ten small boys on day shift in one department." View full size. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.

"The floating folds of the Star Spangled Banner symbolize the American way of life to soldiers in training for the battles that will bring freedom to an unhappy, wartorn world." Fort Knox, Kentucky, June 1942. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer.

1954 Buick "Roadmaster" in a 1953 photograph taken as a study for painted illustrations in advertising, sales brochures, etc. View full size.

June 1942. Combustion Engineering maintenance man working on world's largest cold steel hydraulic press in Chattanooga. It can shape steel plates several inches in thickness. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer.