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Low Miles: 1942
... only drove it once a week to church -- " Of light and color This is a good example of a photo often seen from this period that ... combinations for 1941 is minimal at best. Eye-catching color palette combinations can be visualized in period advertising, links ... Cars, Trucks, Buses, Marjory Collins, Small Towns, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 01/12/2024 - 6:40pm -

November 1942. "Lititz, Pennsylvania. Showroom of the Pierson Motor Company owned by Al Pierson, who is showing his one second-hand car to a local farmer. Before the war there always were three brand new cars in his showroom. Now the chief business of garages is repairing." Acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size. Al Pierson at warMarjory Collins also photographed him sitting resignedly at his dealership desk. She reported that, in addition to keeping the garage open, he was working a defense job at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, and serving as an air raid warden and aircraft spotter. Hmmm. Rare photograph Usually the car salesman has his hand in the customer's pocket. Spiel"This sweet thing was previously owned by a little old lady, who only drove it once a week to church -- " Of light and colorThis is a good example of a photo often seen from this period that shows the position and number of flashes. And it makes me think of how much equipment these photographers were lugging around, and how much effort they had to put into getting the shot. Not to mention knowledge and skill. Also, the car appears to be two-tone. And I'm sure someone here can tell us what those two colors would have been. Four Gallons a WeekThat "A" gas rationing sticker in the rear window allowed the owner to buy four gallons of gasoline a week. Rationing wasn't done so much to reduce gasoline use as it was done to reduce use of tires and conserve the limited rubber supply. I guess the farmer cleaned out the inventoryWe can see in the above photo that, in November 1942, Pierson Motor Co. had one used four-door car. But the inventory was triple that in January 1943, as evidenced by the ad below in The Lititz Record-Express. I also learned exploding antifreeze was a thing. I found the ad looking for an address, which I guess Al Pierson felt wasn't necessary. In another ad the location was listed as Main St. I looked down Main Street on Street View and did not see a building like the one in the 1942 photo. Reeling him in?Spiffy salesman appears ready to set the hook and close the deal on an attractive two-tone 1941 Plymouth Special Deluxe Sedan. A 1939 version from the same manufacturer is parked across the street. Collins' techniqueOkay, there are the shadows from the two flashbulbs -- but why are the farmer's head and right arm transparent, as if she had done open flash? Brilliant new PlymouthInformation on Plymouth two-tone paint combinations for 1941 is minimal at best. Eye-catching color palette combinations can be visualized in period advertising, links below. https://vintagepaint.biz/images/source/Chrysler/Plymouth/1941_ply.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VE4AAOSwSpZd1C7s/s-l1600.png https://s.car.info/image_files/360/0-940480.jpg RedefiningJail birds. Tire treads?I don’t know anything about tires from this era, but the tire treads look a bit worn to me. Can anyone tell if they were in decent shape? Or during wartime, did we just take what we could get and save the good tires for the war effort? Future military manI wonder what would happened to the young farmer. He seems to be of the age the military would mobilize for the war. Seems to be goneListed at 28 West Main Street, looks like a new fire department and a parking lot took over as usual. Making ends meetAs GlenJay noted in the first comment below, Mr Pierson was holding down three jobs. But "serving as an air raid warden and aircraft spotter" would seem to be a cosy gig. As we all know, in 1942, swarms of German bombers made repeated non-stop transatlantic return flights of 40 hours in order to disrupt the operations of the Armstrong Cork Company, a key part of the US weapons industry. Seriously, who in government was that far out-of-touch that a ridiculous position of air raid warden and aircraft spotter was funded in nowheresville Pennsylvania? My dear departed mother was an incendiary bomb rooftop spotter in Oxford, England during the 1940/31 Blitz. For some reason, Germany never bombed Oxford despite the huge Morris Car factory churning out Bren Gun Carriers. But German bombers regularly flew over Oxford on the way to Coventry. Kept her watchful. All Mr Pierson ever had to do besides filling out forms full of zeroes in the Qty columns every day, was to have a darn good sleep every night and collect a paycheck now and then. Truly farcical and illogical to have such official positions, but governments wanted people to be in constant fear of armed alien hordes invading their one-horse towns, apparently. Still at it today. Light and DarkSeems this image was edited in the darkroom to balance light and dark areas, outdoors and indoors, but not consistently edited. Look out the window on the left, there is a straight vertical strip almost the full height of the window where the house and the trees are all lighter within that strip and darker on both sides outside the strip. Light and dark editing would also explain farmer's transparent effect. Probably not a flash or other artifact, just darkroom work. They could do a lot in the darkroom before Photoshop. [There was zero editing "in the darkroom." This is a scan of the camera negative. - Dave] Re: technique, and paint colorsI googled "1941 Plymouth Special Deluxe Sedan colors" and was surprised to discover how many possible colors this car might have been. I'm also surprised that no one has commented on the gas thief bird cage. As for the partially transparent farmer, I think I have a plausible explanation. The most obvious and visible image we see of him is the result of the exposure during the flash. But the film was exposed for a longer duration than that, in order to fully capture the outside elements, and during that time, he moved the parts of his body that appear to be a double exposure (his right arm and the back of his head). Reminiscent of 2020-22The idea of one used car in a dealership is reminiscent of what we saw during Covid, when supply chain was so badly constrained. I recall showing up at the local Subaru dealer for service and they had absolutely nothing on the showroom floor. No new cars available, and few used. Third brake/tail light Didn't realize they had that back in the 40's . Thanks ! Lively ACIntrigued by the bird cage with its catchy sign, I did some digging. An online auction listing for a bird cage similar to this one but plugging (haha) AC spark plugs describes it as a "Vintage Gas Station Display/Sign. Nice early Spark Plugs Display consisting of two old spark plugs posing as birds in a bird cage with a double-sided tin sign hanging underneath that reads: 'These Birds Were Caught Stealing Gas! And replaced with Lively AC spark plugs' The early ones did not have the AC brand on them; they did that later." So it seems that our sign is one of the early ones without the branding. Now I just wonder why it appears that there is a single stuffed bird in the cage, and not two spark plug birds. Maybe those flew away. The wall hanging (not the car)Your next car _ De Soto. Styled to stand out _ Built to stand up! (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Marjory Collins, Small Towns, WW2)
Time to Make the Donuts
... to believe it was taken in the forties. I love the color! I love the color of these Kodachrome transparencies you're posting. Absolutely marvelous! ... - Dave.] (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/05/2012 - 9:27am -

June 1942. Truck driver at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Douglas Dam. View full size. Amazing 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer. Amazing! It looks like aAmazing! It looks like a photo taken in a studio with a complex lighting setup. Or maybe a modern HDR photo. Hard to believe it was taken in the forties. I love the color!I love the color of these Kodachrome transparencies you're posting. Absolutely marvelous! Please post more if you got 'em. [Glad you like them. For many if not most of the ones we are posting, this is the first time they've been seen in all their high-res, color-corrected glory. - Dave] Color correctionDave, What color correction do you do to Kodachromes? Do 40s Kodachromes need any? I believe this particular emulsion should be good for something like 180 years when stored dry and dark. BTW: Love this site and visit twice a day at least to see if there is something new. The photographs by Jack Delano that you put up made me buy 48 rolls of Kodachrome 64: great stuff while it lasts. [Thanks. There was no color correcting for this one aside from hitting Auto Color in Photoshop, which will remove any color cast. Then there is usually a bit of tweaking with the Shadows and Highlights filter. One reason these look so nice is the large film size. The 4 by 5 inch Kodachrome sheets used to make these pictures have 18.4 square inches of usable surface area, which is 18 times as much as a 35mm film frame, which gives almost exactly one square inch. So there is a lot more information to work with. The archival tiffs for these images are from 130 to 200 mb in size. The Delano pictures tend to be underexposed and require a bit more tweaking. Below is a Delano shot with the before-and-after versions in alternating stripes. - Dave] ExposureDave, Thanks for taking the time for your comprehensive reply. Although I have a Graflex Crown Graphic 4x5, I am resigned to using it with Ektachrome 100 EPP readyloads, as Kodachrome is nowadays available in 35 mm only. The Kodachrome goes in a Leica M6 TTL therefor and has to be sent to Kansas (the only remaining K14 lab in the world) for processing. The original Delano slide looks underexposed by at least a full stop and certainly benefits from your post processing. If Delano exposed like this consistedly, I wonder why. Keep up the good work! [The darkness of some of these may have to do with the settings used by the contractors who digitize these for the LOC. They may be erring on the side of caution. You can usually extract a nice picture from the tiff of an underexposed sheet whereas with an overexposed image you are pretty much stuck with what you see. - Dave] Original Kodachrome FilmWe must remember that the original Kodachrome film was ASA 10 and very contrasty. It was hard to overexpose it! Kodachrome II (ASA 25) came out around 1960 and was far better. These photographs are just so good! I can't tear myself away from the computer until I've seen them all. GREAT work, Dave. Scanner?Can anybody comment on the scanner used for these shots? [There is no scanner. The LOC transparencies are digitized using a Sinar studio back, which is something like a regular digital camera (but without a light source, which the user has to supply along with a lens, if one is needed). Basically a giant CCD array that records an image in one to four exposures. - Dave.] (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, WW2)
Let George Do It: 1942
... Office of War Information. View full size. Door Color Conventions Would they have painted the area around the handle which ... (1942) (The Gallery, Jack Delano, Kitchens etc., WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/28/2023 - 2:48pm -

September 1942. Fort Belvoir, Virginia. "Army Sgt. George Camplair on kitchen police duty." Last seen here, 10 years ago. Photo by Jack Delano, Office of War Information. View full size. Door Color ConventionsWould they have painted the area around the handle which also extends to the trim for avoiding dirty handprints, or is there another reason for doing that? Low light contrast for the 0300 KP arrivals, maybe? For crying out loudA sergeant peeling onions? Must have been as rare then as it has been during my time in another army. Well, at least now I know what "kitchen police duty" means. The Life of GeorgeFrom www.findagrave.com https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/71018696/george-hans-camplair George Hans Camplair BIRTH 27 Jun 1919 Berlin, Germany DEATH 2 Dec 1999 (aged 80) McMinnville, Yamhill County, Oregon, USA News-Register, McMinnville, Oregon, December 4, 1999 A memorial service for George Hans Camplair of McMinnville will be held at 11 a.m. Monday in Trinity Lutheran Church, McMinnville. Mr. Camplair died Dec. 2, 1999, in Willamette Valley Medical Center, McMinnville. He was 80. He was born June 27, 1919, in Berlin, Germany. He and Mary Jane McNutt were married in 1946. He worked with the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II in Africa and Hawaii. He continued as a cartographer with the Corps in Washington, D.C., from 1945 to 1979, when he retired. He moved from Virginia to Portland in 1993 and had lived in McMinnville since 1994. Mr. Camplair was named Volunteer of the Year in 1998 by the Oregon Alliance of Senior and Health Services. He had worked as a volunteer for Meals on Wheels, Loaves and Fishes and the McMinnville chapter of Habitat for Humanity. He was a master gardener and worked many hours on landscaping projects as a member of the garden committee at Hillside Manor, McMinnville. He was a hike leader for McMinnville Senior Center. He belonged to Trinity Lutheran Church. Survivors include two sons, Christopher Camplair of Portland and George M. Camplair of Nashville, Tenn.; a daughter, Nancy Phelps of Portland; and eight grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife in 1981; and a brother, Peter Camplair, in 1971. Memorial contributions may be made to Habitat for Humanity, McMinnville Chapter, 342 N.E. Third St., McMinnville, OR 97128. Arrangements are under the direction of Heritage Memorial, Portland. Who wore the apron in this family ?Sgt. Camplair (1919-1999) eventually made it out of the kitchen and got married in 1946: On a side note, it can be pointed out that as the family had actually emigrated from Germany - George was born in Berlin - fate might well have found him in another kitchen, peeling Zwiebeln for the Wehrmacht. SurpriseI do wonder that an NCO gets this kind of KP duty. Are there no privates? Peeling potatoesWhy bother doing it at all? I grew up in a household that peeled potatoes and carrots, but now I peel neither. I just wash them first, then move on to the rest of the prep without peeling. Even for mashed potatoes. There are nutrients and roughage in those skins – why waste time and food removing and tossing them? [Those are onions in the photo! - Dave] More on doorsI suspect Eventerguy is correct; I've seen similar black-painted areas on doors in other military structures, like these doors at Camp Reynolds on Angel Island. Makes me wonder if this was a standard military practice for high-traffic doors, or if each army post came up with the idea on their own. KP duty? I was this many years old when I learned KP duty was "kitchen police" and not "kitchen patrol" duty! Let George do it?Doesn't look like Bob Bailey to me. Probably very few would get that reference. TimelineThanks to Rochester for researching George Camplair's history. It really adds weight to an image to know a little more about the people in it. Interesting he was born in Berlin but was ultimately in the US Army. Not that was necessarily unusual, but worthy to note. Thanks also to Notcom for the 1946 news story on George's wedding to Mary McNutt. Probably the girl shown in the 'Sarge At Large' photo 10/20/23 (1942) (The Gallery, Jack Delano, Kitchens etc., WW2)
Langley Field: 1942
... God Bless! I like this This picture is a mirror of WW2 The war was in color It's always wonderfully startling for me to see World War II and the ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/22/2012 - 12:44pm -

July 1942. Servicing an A-20 bomber at Langley Field, Virginia. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer. I love this. That's such aI love this. That's such a beautiful plane too. Wonderful picture. God Bless! I like thisThis picture is a mirror of WW2 The war was in colorIt's always wonderfully startling for me to see World War II and the 40s in realistic color. Between the black-and-white photos, the antiqued look of cheaper movies, and the aggressively desaturated color of the Spielberg/Hanks epics, I sometimes have trouble picturing the everyday reality of it. Black and white and the other forms aestheticizes and brings out pure forms and content, but there's something to be said for the way a color photo makes what seems remote familiar and contemporaneous. TechnicolorThat's when Technicolor's original three-strip process was being used for movies, anyway. Vividly-saturated color images are just as true-to-life to the 1940s as crisp black-and-white. For an antidote to Spielbergian 1940s color, see Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (excluding the two-color section at the beginning). Digitally color-adjusted to simulate the Technicolor "look." The War In ColorI heartily and enthusiastically recommend a mini-series called "The Second World War in Colour" (it's British) which has spawned a variety of successor series for various countries - I think that the most recent one is "Japan's War in Colour." There is a lot of gorgeous colour footage out there, and a lot of it was shot by amateurs of everyday life. Well worth finding. A-20This recent "Stars and Stripes" article tells the story of three U.S. airmen's remains that had originally been found in the wreckage of their A-20 Havoc (misidentified in the article as an "A-JO"), which had crashed in Nazi Germany in December, 1944. The airmen were identified using DNA and other means; they will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery on April 18th. Denny Gill Chugiak, Alaska B-18 back there tooNote the rare Douglas B-18 Bolo just visible far in the distance in the lower right corner of the photo. The B-18 was a bomber derived from the DC-3 airliner, using the latter's wing and engines with a new fuselage. Small numbers were bought in the 1930s as a cheaper alternative to the more complex and costly Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. Surviving examples soldiered on through WW2 mostly in stateside coastal patrol or training roles. Based on the camouflage scheme of the aircraft, I would venture a guess that this a "Boston," the RAF version of the A-20. US versions would've been Olive Drab over Neutral Gray; this one is painted in the RAF equivalent colors of Dark Green and Dark Earth over Sky. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2)
Times Square: 1943
... But, 'LK' is correct, the photo looks like it was color from the get go. Perfect this way, I think Vachon would approve. ... Pulitzer prize winner died at age 45 in N.Y.C. In Europe, WW2 and the holocaust was in full boil. Americans were using ration stamps and ... 
 
Posted by Avzam - 10/06/2011 - 4:44am -

This is my first attempt to colorize an old photo (Times Square, photographed by John Vachon in 1943). I researched some of the signs in their original colors so I could be as close as possible in the photo. Such is the case with the "Saludos Amigos" poster and the Schaefer beer sign. View full size. No Business Like Show Business"The Human Comedy" was a timely reminder of how absurd our condition can become at times: men, women and children dying by the score in Europe, the CBI and Pacific, and business as usual (it could have been no other way)in Manhattan. Looks like the Checker Cab design team was trying to compete with their Airflow counterparts. Nice technical work by Avzam. Fooled MeAt first glance I assumed this was Kodak slide film. Great job. Amazing what a different feel this gritty, dark version of Times Square has to what it is now. It reminds me of Europe. One heck of a work!!As an artist myself I've long desired to colorize one of these extraordinary B&W Shorpy photos. I have to admit that you've done an especially wonderful job!! Your work is incredible for a first timer. I hope that I do as well when I finally find the time to colorize one myself. Your colorized image now graces my 30" Hewlett-Packard monitor and believe me - it looks spectacular! Thank you for giving me something to enjoy - and for something that I need to aim for. Thanks again for some wonderful work! Tom Chatterton PerfectionWonderful job, very well done. Note that the taxi cabs have their headlights blacked out, the civilian car near the corner doesen't. But, 'LK' is correct, the photo looks like it was color from the get go. Perfect this way, I think Vachon would approve. Nice first attemptVery good job with the colorization. Looks like you can jump into that picture and hail a cab. Better grab your umbrella though. SuperbThe B&W version of this image was one of the very first pictures I ever downloaded from Shorpy. Such a deliciously evocative scene. The color version is even more exquisite. This is my new wallpaper. Thank you! Off ColorNo question that this is a great colorization job. If I remember correctly that 7th Avenue Trolley car just coming into the picture on the right was mostly yellow. Where the action isThis is a spectacular and extraordinary picture in both black and white and colorized. If you look at and into this photo long enough, you begin to feel the cold rain and atmosphere of March 1943. Some of the events of that month in NYC included the premiere of the musical "Oklahoma" to rave reviews, John Steinbeck married his wife Gwyn in NYC that month. Christopher Walken was born on 3/31/43 in Queens, N.Y. Stephen Benet, author, poet and Pulitzer prize winner died at age 45 in N.Y.C. In Europe, WW2 and the holocaust was in full boil. Americans were using ration stamps and American industry was booming, churning out endless shiploads of supplies for defense. Families were receiving telegrams informing them of their soldiers' news. Patriotism was high but so was fear and worry. After contemplating what might have been happening there and then, you begin to feel you are part of this picture. And you are. Thanks Shorpy for the time machine trip I took this morning via this masterpiece. Well done!!Love those yellow taxis! Ah, SchaeferThe one beer to have when you're having more than one! Great job! Oh wowIf you hadn't said it was colorized, I would never have known. The only things that stand out as not quite natural looking are the taxis. Easily the best colorization job I've ever seen. Impressive work!That is some impressing coloring. Really brings the picture to life. SweetVery nicely done! Superb job!What really makes it for me are the colored reflections of the lights and taxis on the wet pavement. Also the man's brown coat in the foreground. Very well done. Curb cornersWhat are the stripes on the curb -- a no parking area? Color makes this a GREAT rainy day photograph!Super job on the colorization - can't tell it from an original color print. I love vintage street scenes, particularly those taken around dusk on a rainy day. This scene certainly fits the bill, but it's the color that makes this a great photograph. Many thanks. Fantastic.This was the first photo I purchased from you and it looks even better in color! As a fan of the old NYC two color signals (Ruleta's) I will say that if you look closely at the green section of the signal you will see a cross pattern. That was actually a black out plate that was installed during the war to reduce the visibility of the signals from above (thus eliminating the potential for bombing.) The red section was also so equipped and as such the red section may not have been as visible as you have colorized it to be. And now I will go back to picking fly specs out of pepper! lol. Thank you for a great job. I am now torn between the original and colorized version for the next order. Home run!Would love to see a pic taken from this same location today. Checker CabsThose Model A Checkers are fiendishly ugly, yet I'd give my eyeteeth for one. There are only one or two left in existence. They were run into the ground and then stripped for parts to keep the rest of the fleet running. Question for Shorpy-itesDoes anyone know of a website or anywhere I could research what movies were playing at the Times Square theatres and when? For instance, if I wanted to find out how long "Human Comedy" played at the Astor or "Saludos Amigos" at the Globe, where would I go? Just wondering. [N.Y. Times archive. - Dave] Another success!I find the mark of a good colourisation is that I have to study it and think "is it or isn't it?" This one's super; well done. Cold, wet and miserableThe guy just behind the subway entrance looks to be all three of these, with his cap pulled low, shoulders hunched and collar turned up against the rain. I can sympathize with him. Zebra curbsIf I remember correctly the stripes on the curb showed the crosswalk limits. The paint they used back they wore off the streets rather quickly, it wasn't the plasticized stuff that they use today. If you look in the lower right corner, you can see the end of the crosswalk stripe and one of the stripes on the top of the curb. True to LifeOutstanding workmanship! +66Below is the same view from August of 2009. Old Vs. NewAm I the only one who prefers the 1943 version to the newer ole? My all-time favoriteGreat job colorizing my all-time favorite photo shown on Shorpy. I'll be taking my family to see "Wicked" at the Gershwin Theater on W 48th St. in two weeks, so maybe I'll try and get a +68 shot to go along with timeandagainphoto's. I think I have a fedora like the gentleman stepping up on the curb. Re: +66Thanks for the comparison pic of what looks like the exact spot. Very interesting! Sign colors seem a bit too too dullI too have made this my desktop background, but after staring at it for a while, I have to question the colors of the signs, which seem too dull and grey to be realistic, even though you explicitly state that you researched them. Even on a grey, rainy day in a grimy, depressed city, I should think the Saludos Amigos marquee, for example, would be more brightly colored. But as someone with only the most rudimentary control of Photoshop, I applaud your efforts nonetheless! I feel like I'm thereThe cold rain, horns honking, neon crackling; wish I could stop in a diner for some ham & eggs (was ham rationed?). Great, great work - my favorite colorized picture bar none! (ShorpyBlog, Colorized Photos)
Vacation Wagon: 1964
... Once again the red stationwagon family blows me away. The color composition here is perfect. Chevy Parkwood This is a 1960 ... started taking trips to Cheney, Washington, to visit my WW2 buddy. All on old state highways, no air conditioner, 4½ hours to get ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 05/31/2022 - 1:09am -

        Our annual salute to the start of vacation road-trip season, first posted here 15 years ago. Everyone buckled in? Let's go! "Great Falls, Montana. Return after 3 weeks Vacation. June 27, 1964." This Kodachrome of a 1960 Chevrolet Parkwood station wagon is from a box of slides found on eBay. View full size. family trips in those carsI also spent some hot days in a car like that on the way to the grandparents. My mother flattened the second seat, put a mattress on the floor and loaded three of us and the stuff in on top of it, us and the stuff equally loose and not tied down. We whined and fought and slept our way to Cape Cod from southern NJ. My father always "had to work" (they were her parents), so she did the drive alone, I think maybe 12 or 16 hours? Seemed like forever. NostalgicThese people still had a bright future ahead of them, full of great hopes for the days to come. They hadn't gone to the Moon yet, and to them, by 2007 we'd have personal helicopters and robots would run everything. The possibility of the President being indicted for a crime was unthinkable. My job as a web designer hadn't even been invented yet. The lawn looks like it's literally astroturf. Were the colors really like that, or is it an effect of the kodachrome? Holy cow! We had a 59 chevyHoly cow! We had a 59 chevy stationwagon back in the day. Does this bring back memories. We would drive to Florida from Virginia a two day trip usually in the heat of the summer to visit grandparents. Five children two parents no ac. Damn! [This is a 1960 Chevrolet. - Dave] DeflectorsDoes anybody know/remember what the deflectors left and right of the rear window were for? These may have been an aftermarket item. It is amazing how well the colors in this slide are preserved after almost 50 years. It looks like Kodachrome all right, including the telltale blue cast in the shadows The Astroturf look......to my eye, seems to come from the little flowers (or toadstools?) that are in the lawn. At the smaller image size, they look like specular reflections, making it seem like the grass is shiny. [The white flowers are clover. - Dave] 1964As I remember it, this was less than a year after the assassination of JFK, there were race riots in the south and we (I was 14) were all starting to question attitudes towards women, blacks, hispanics, homosexuals and the culture we had grown up with. One of the more minor cultural things was the importance of your front lawn. 50 years?I was born in 1964, and trust me, it hasn't been 50 years since then, yet.... ;) Re:DeflectorsThe deflectors on either side of the rear window were intended to blow air across the rear window to prevent snow from accumulating. A similar deflector is often fitted along the roof on station wagons from the 60s on. I think they were usually a factory or dealer option in later years, but I really don't know specifically about this model or when they might have first been used. OK, 40 years.Sorry, I was too vexed on the year of manufacture of the car. I remember that someone in our street had the sedan version of this Chevy. Like any 8 year old, I was fascinated by the winged tail and the panorama windshield. You didn't see many of these in Europe around 1960; everbody, including my father, was driving Volkswagen Beetles. (He later had a new Ford Mustang 1964 1/2 , with a 289 ci V8 and a four speed box, rally pack and (optional) front discs, which I found very impressive at the time. A real gas guzzler by European standards. Family TrucksterThis is probably what Clark Griswold's dad took the family on vacation in. It's a 1960 Chevy, and I'm guessing it's a Kingswood model. The Brookwood was the more stripped down model and I think the "full dresser" was called a Nomad. This one isn't completely chromed-out and it has the small, dog-dish hubcaps so I'm thinking it's the middle of the line model. I think the rear air deflectors also helped keep exhaust gas from entering the rear passenger compartment when the vehicle was moving with the tailgate window was lowered. Though it doesn't look like there's room for anybody in the third row of seats for this trip. With the window up they also helped keep the rear glass clear of snow and dust. These are Parents of the Year......in my book. Can you imagine going across country now without all of the luxuries and Wendy's and portable DVD players and Nintendo and cell phones and credit cards? These parents did it all the HARD way...and I'll bet they made a lot of memories that summer! My jaw droppedOnce again the red stationwagon family blows me away. The color composition here is perfect. Chevy ParkwoodThis is a 1960 Chevrolet Parkwood. Parkwoods and Kingswoods both use Bel Air trim (mid-level). The Kingswood, a nine-passenger wagon, has the third-row rear-facing seat, and two steps on the rear bumper (one on each end just outside of where the tailgate would come down). Less obvious is that all Kingswoods have power tailgate windows, an option on the other Chevrolet wagons. I still drive a '59 ChevyI recommend owning one. In 2000 We took the ultimate road trip with mine from near the Canadian border in Washington State through the desert to Las Vegas and back up through California and Oregon. There really is nothing like seeing the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet. Cruising the Strip in Vegas was a blast. We might as well have been driving a space ship with the reactions we got. Sadly, these Chevrolets were mostly scrapped and very few survive. 60 ChevySadly, the third row seat had not been invented as of yet and the deflectors were used to deflect air into the rear of the stationwagon at slower speeds. I may not be an expert but I'm old enough to have ridden and slept in the back section of a folded down stationwagon. We didn't know about SUV's yet. Chevy WagonChevy's Parkwood and Kingswood wagons could both be had with a third-row seat. And back then, for the record - wagons WERE the "SUVs" of the day! [According to the 1960 Chevrolet sales brochure, only the Kingswood was available with third-row seating. The International Travelall and Chevy Suburban Carryall were two of the SUVs of the day. - Dave] The luggage rackis something you don't see anymore. It hung on the wall of the garage when not in use. Once my dad, who was in a big hurry, didn't secure the tarp on top properly... We played car games, like Alphabet, Road Bingo, and License Plates, read books, colored,sang songs and squabbled. You took your chances with local restaurants. We hadn't got used to entertainment on demand, so we didn't miss it. And to Dave Faris: It's the film. I once assured my daughter that colors when I was a kid were the same as today. "The Fifties," she said, in her narrator's voice, "were an oddly-hued decade." Slide ConversionHow does one convert slides to digital photos? Any website links or advice? [You'd use a film scanner. I used a Nikon 4000 ED for this one. - Dave] Family TrucksterWe had a green Ford station wagon, not nearly as nice as this, and with our family of six, it was a masochistic experience to take family vacations. Every summer we said that's it, we will never do this again, until the following summer when we did it again. The best part was arriving home again, but I will say that NOT having DVD's and high tech electronic gadgets forced the kids to look out the window and they gained incredible geographic knowledge from seeing the U.S. I could truthfully call these annual trips "purgatory on wheels." Road TripMost all of my long-distance car trips were connected with moving as my father was in the USAF. In August 1954, after being in the UK 2½ years, we got in our in our '53 Chevy coupe and went from New York City to the SF Bay Area, mostly along US 40. Entertainment consisted of looking at the scenery and checking off the towns on the free roadmaps that the service stations provided in each state. Iy being the pre-Interstate era, one did go thru many towns back then! (Excepting on the PA Turnpike) Burma-Shave signs relieved the boredom in the rural areas. We had a car radio (AM only, of course), but for some reason I can only recall it being used while crossing the salt flats west of Salt Lake City. Westward HoIn 1951 our family, my wife, son and daughter, living in Detroit, started taking trips to Cheney, Washington, to visit my WW2 buddy. All on old state highways, no air conditioner, 4½ hours to get through Chicago and the kids loved it. Took these trips out west to the 1970s. We still go west to see my buddy and my daughter in Seattle and we enjoy crossing Nebraska on old U.S. 30. It is a treat to be off of I-80. Nostalgia Ain't What it Used to BeDon't look at this picture and pine for the old days. Change the car to a green Olds Vista Cruiser and that's us in 1969. Back then, dads bought a new station wagon to kick off the summer vacation. Dads don't buy an SUV today for that reason. Without repeating some of the horrors already mentioned below, there was the additional joy of Mom sending back a Coca Cola bottle for one of her sons to use in lieu of a loo. If the girls had to go, we had to pull over. Not so with the boys. Watching mom backhand-fling a Coke bottle out her window, filled with fluid far different that what was originally intended, and seeing it bounce and spill along the shoulder as we whizzed along at 75 mph (pun intended), that's about the fondest vacation memory at least from the car perspective. Today with the daughter hooked up to a video iPod and the sons enjoying their PSP, it's a pleasure to drive for distances. Back then, we didn't play License Plates. We played Punch Buggy and Slug Bug, etc. Fistfight games. Let's go!I loved car trips, and I never had DVD players and Nintendo. I watched the scenery and kept a travel diary. those were some of the greatest times of my life. Road TrripWe had to make do with pillows & blankets. A mattress would have made it actually comfortable. I don't know if Dad didn't have the imagination for that, or just not the money. I suspect the latter. We'd sing sometimes. It was 12 hours from north Georgia near the North Carolina line to south Georgia, near the Florida line, where my grandmother lived. I see the moon; the moon sees me. The moon sees the one that I want to see ... Thanks for the memoriesMy folks had the four-door sedan version of this car, in sky blue & white. My mom used to have a station wagon, don't remember what kind, but it was memorable for its pushbutton transmission on the dash instead of a gearshift! However my favorite "finned" car was our family's Buick Invicta. Now that was a car! Third Row SeatsFords had third-row seats in 1955. I'm pretty sure Chevy had them by 1958 at least. Chevy didn't offer woodgrain sides until '65. Sunday ridesWe had that same car, only in light blue. No seat belts or infant seats for us! We'd put my baby sister in one of those deathtrap baby seats that hooked over the front seat and off we went! What a picture!This picture takes me back almost 40 years to the road trips our family did during summer holidays when I was a little boy. It feels like I myself am stretching my legs after coming home. The colours, the moment -- one of my favorite pictures in Shorpy. My Favorite Car was a 1960 Chevrolet Impala 2-dr hardtop. Bluish gray with white segment on the side, red and white interior. The first car my wife and I bought. Paid $1750 for it used in 1962. We made some wonderful trips in that car. Re: Family TrucksterJust saw this item on TV yesterday about a real family named Griswold that had their station wagon modded to look like the Family Truckster from National Lampoon's Vacation movie for their trip to Disney World. http://tinyurl.com/plo5kub See the USA in Your ChevroletFor our family, it was a 1962 Buick Invicta wagon. Huge car designed for doing massive mileage on the interstates and that's what we did -- six or seven hundred miles a day from Indiana to the Rockies for our annual vacation. Procedure for Accessing the Cargo AreaWe had one of these when I was a kid as well. Ours was a silver gray color. See the chrome disk on the trunk door? Upon arriving at destination, here's what you had to do: 1) Put trunk key in center slot (separate keys for ignition and trunk back then) 2) Open flap (as seen in photo) 3) Rotate flap several times till rear window is fully down 4) Reach in and grab handle to drop tailgate Simple, huh? Looking at old red carsmakes my elbows hurt! Seemed like some of those old single stage paints, reds in particular, had to be waxed every two weeks to keep them looking decent. The widespread adoption of clearcoat finishes in the late 80's to mid 90's freed modern kids from the dreaded frequent waxing chore, thereby giving them the leisure time to start the video gaming revolution... As Long AsThis isn't really the "End of the Road"! That's a scary title for all the Shorpy Faithful. 3 Adults + 7 Children =1000 mile round trip to see grandma. We kids didn't mind a bit. Seat belts?I don't think you heard "Everybody all buckled up?" all that much in '64. I'm not sure of the exact dates, but if you had seatbelts back then, you bought them at a discount store or an auto parts store like Western Auto or J. C. Whitney, and they were lap belts only. Three point seat belts didn't come along for several more years, if I recall correctly, and it wasn't until the government mandated new cars with ignition interlocks in the 1970's that "real men" started to actually use them. Back then, we used to spend our vacations camping, so the car was packed to the gills, including the center of the back seat. My sister and I each got little cubbyholes next to the doors, with just room enough to sit for the trip to northern Wisconsin. My dad drove a two tone green '55 Oldsmobile Delta 88. I saw a picture of that car a few months ago, and as soon as I did, I started remembering a surprising amount of detail about the car's details. It was handed down to me when I went off to college in '64. Seat beltsbobdog19006 is correct in that seat belts were not standard equipment in 1960. However, they had been available as a dealer-installed option since the 50s. By 1966, they were standard in all Chevys, and by 1968, they were federally mandated. I spent many a happy hour on family roadtrips in our '68 Ford wagon, nestled in the narrow gap between the second row and the rear-facing third-row seat, no seat belt, of course. Neither did my siblings in the third row. Service StickersI remember those stickers that service stations or car dealers put on the inside edge of the driver's door when you got your car serviced. This Chevrolet has two. Our road trip rigWe had a '76 Chevy Beauville van, a ho-hum light brown rather than red, which made up for the lack of chrome spears with its cavernous interior: two bucket seats in front for Mom and Dad, two bench seats, and a homemade plywood bed. Strangely, all that space wasn't enough to prevent sibling quarrels. The best story of this van was the return trip of its maiden voyage, when my uncle, who owned a small niche-market manufacturing firm, talked my dad into towing a piece of equipment from South Texas to a parking lot near Chicago, where we would deliver it to his customer from Wisconsin. We quickly got used to being asked at every single hotel, gas station, and rest stop, exactly what was the three-wheeled contraption with the hydraulically-actuated vertical roller-chain conveyor with teeth. The looks on everyone's faces when my dad told them it was a grave-digging machine: Priceless! Curtains?Every August for years we travelled from Birmingham to Cincinnati for a week of visiting my parents' relatives. Before our last such trip in '69, we went through a black-and-white '57 Plymouth Savoy, a metallic-beige '63 Ford Country Sedan wagon (the one without wood on the sides) and a '67 Olds VistaCruiser. I'd love to have that VistaCruiser back today. Ours was burgundy red and my dad put red stripe Tiger Paw tires on it. Imagine a 442 station wagon. As for Shorpy's '60 Chevy wagon, I only just noticed the homemade or aftermarket side curtains, with vertical stripes of brown, gold and red to compliment the bright red car. Thanks, Dave, for showing us this photo again... and including all the original comments, too. Great to relive all the great summer vacation stories with everyone! Re: deflectorsIn the days before the rear window wiper on a station wagon, some folks put these on and the deflected air current would help to clean off that window to a degree. Not having either, within a mile that rear hatch would be almost impossible to see through. Been there, done that and got the tee-shirt. This does bring back memoriesWe had a similar station wagon, but it was salmon (or was it mauve, or ecru?) colored with a white top (I think). It had a 460 a/c (four windows down while traveling sixty miles per hour, some times 560 with the rear tailgate window down). I remember taking a trip from Mississippi to Six Flags over Texas on U.S. Highway 82 (two lane most of the way) in Summer, 1964. The back seats were folded down, and the four of us kids had pillows, blankets, books, and board games to pass the time. It was replaced soon after with a 1965 Ford Country Squire Wagon with a/c, and fake wood paneling on the side. Instead of a rear facing bench seat, it had two small seats on either side that faced each each other. Memories of summer tripsWe also lived in Montana back then, and our family truckster in the 1960s was a 1963 Rambler Classic station wagon. (Yes, I suffered greatly for it among my friends.) That's what I learned to drive, and we ranged all over the western US and Canada in it. Before that, however, we traveled in a 1949 Studebaker Land Cruiser 4-door sedan, which my dad (both inventive and frugal) had outfitted with a set of three back seats that, when covered with the mattress from our roll-away bed, filled the back seat and trunk area with a very passable sleeping unit. That's where I spent most of my time on our travels. At other times, I would climb over the front seatback into the front bench seat between my parents. That's where I was on August 5, 1962, when we were preparing to leave Crescent City, CA, and heard on the radio that Marilyn Monroe had died. Deflector's actual purposeWas to break the "vacuum" the "wall" that was the rear of that wagon created which would suck exhaust into the car if that rear window was open even a little bit. The fresh air, the snowless/cleaner rear window were merely bonuses... Buckle up?A 1960 Chevy wagon probably didn't have seat belts unless the owner installed them. The kids in the back were pretty much free range as long as they didn't make too much noise. Lots of people piled the stuff on the roof and put a mattress in the back for the kids. It was a great way to go and most of us survived. [Seat belts were optional on all 1960 Chevrolets. - Dave] Car playgroundMy folks had a Ford wagon of that era. No seatbelts. Folks put a mattress in the back. Became our playground on long trips. We had no desire to "sit" in a seat. Miss station wagonsI miss station wagons. I prefer them to the SUVs that replaced them. I also miss the bold bright colors that cars use to come in. No SquattingLooking at all the stuff already loaded, I'm surprised the back of this wagon isn't dragging on the ground. In fact it's sitting pretty level. I wonder if dad had overload springs installed? We've had one built for you.To BillyB: Station wagon suspensions were designed with the idea that they would have to haul some combination of eight people and their luggage, so they did OK when loaded down. They *were* softer than contemporary pickup trucks, so the back end of the station wagon wouldn't bounce all over if there were only one or two people in it. Especially at the time of this photo, gas was 25 cents a gallon and would be that price forever, so the factory didn't mind spending a little extra weight on a beefier suspension. Also, most of the really heavy luggage went on the roof rack, which was fairly close to being in the middle of the wheelbase. The back-back, behind the rear seat, tended to contain lighter things, like blankets, pillows, the picnic basket, and - as the trip progressed - bags of souvenirs. If Dad wanted to use the inside rear-view mirror, you couldn't stack stuff much higher than the seats, anyway. Source: I rode in the back of a '79 Oldsmobile wagon every summer from '79 to '87. I think the longest trip we took in it was from Kansas City to Washington, DC and back. WagonsWe had a 1956 Ford wagon, then '61 Mercury wagon, finally a (I think) 1964 Ford wagon. I remember one year with the Mercury, my mom ran low on gas. We were up in the mountains in a resort town. To get to the gas station, she had to reverse up hills, turn around for the downhills, turn around again for going up the next hill. What a ride. Another time, 1965, we were in a typhoon in the current wagon. There were eleven of us in it. Another wild ride driving on a road along the bay. Waves washing over us, my mom hugging the middle of the road (there was an island we could not get across). Wagons were great. The 283 V-8with its 170 gross horsepower is not going to have much highway passing reserve with all that weight. Cross-flags over the V on the tailgate would have indicated one of several 348's which would have given more than enough reserve. That car is 58 years old but properly equipped could have kept pace with most cars on the road today in equal comfort. A 58 year old car in 1960 by comparison was barely even recognizable as such it was so rudimentary by comparison to the 1960 version in its looks and capabilities. The same comparisons held true in all other realms of life comparing 1960 to 1902--homes, conveniences, dress, you name it. Virtually any of those later areas are not that significantly different from their 1960 versions. Those deflectors... were supposed to keep dust off the back window Nikon CoolscanI am having a problem with mine. Can you recommend a place that can repair them. [There aren't any. Try buying them used on eBay. - Dave] 283 V8Although I agree that a 348 engine would have been a better choice for this station wagon. The 170hp 283 was the base V8 engine with just a single two barrel carburetor. The next option up was also a 283 but with a four barrel which the above wagon may have had, which would have given it a little more passing power. Koolscan softwareDave. What software program do you use with your 4000? As it seems the program that came with it is only works for Microsoft VISTA. [I use the NikonScan software that came with the scanner, on a Windows 10 workstation. To install the software on a modern operating system, you have to disable Driver Signature Enforcement. And it's Coolscan, with a C. - Dave] (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Kodachromes 1, Travel & Vacation)
Color Wheels: 1943
... Gallery, Arthur Siegel, Baltimore, Cars, Trucks, Buses, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/16/2017 - 12:03pm -

May 1943. "Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, Baltimore. Ship painters loaded on a truck." Photo by Arthur Siegel for the Office of War Information. View full size. PopeyeThe truck is a circa 1937 International D300 COE. No raises in 1943...due to price controls and rationing. Those boys are happy to be sending another boat on the way to fight Hitler and Tojo, I think. They're also happy because a few years ago, a lot of them were unemployed. Did they just get a raise?That's the happiest group of workers I've ever seen. A customer of mineWay back in the mid 70s/early 80s time frame, Maryland Shipbuilding was one of my customers on the B&O RR. We'd leave them a few cars about every night, just inside their gate. They moved them around in their facility with self-propelled cranes. Of course, the amount of work there in my time was a fraction of what it was for these fellows in the photo. Maryland Shipbuilding folded about 1996. The last time I was down there, Toyota was using the large lot to store new autos. Armstrong Cork?Looks like that sign on the truck's side could be Armstrong Cork. I think they used a lot of product as insulation on USN ships. Power steeringI drove a flatbed of the same vintage when I worked in a tannery. The power steering worked the same way as the power brakes, and the non-synchro transmission, muscle power. Notice the wide arc of the steering wheel. (The Gallery, Arthur Siegel, Baltimore, Cars, Trucks, Buses, WW2)
Bunny Roosevelt: 1920
... glass negative. View full size. Who needs color? This is some picture. The richness of detail, the depth, the way it ... Bunny and Mr, Marshall I am reading a book about WW2 leaders and Mrs. Roosevelt's name came up. She contacted General George C. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/26/2012 - 11:43am -

Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Jr." Née Eleanor Butler ("Bunny") Alexander. Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size. Who needs color?This is some picture. The richness of detail, the depth, the way it goes in and out of focus. Plus the subject is quite striking. Whatever she paid for this portrait, she got her money's worth. [Who needs color? Funny you should mention that. - Dave] WowThat is all I can say - WOW~!!!!!! PETA...would have a field day with this one. Fur, fur and feathers. The Great EscapeIt appears to me that a smile is about to break out. Absolutely lovelySuch modesty. "Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art." -- The other Eleanor Roosevelt She's beautifulShe's a very pretty woman; I'd rather see her without the hat, though. So chic!The lady is clearly a beauty, and has a wonderful sense of style! No wonder Teddy Jr. fell for her. Tactile MemoriesI can feel that fur against my face from when I was small in the late 30's and used to snuggle into the fur on my mother's coat. It looked just like the one shown here. Sure proves to me that one did not have to be rich to wear fur because we most certainly were not. "Bunny"Did they call her that because she liked to wear two or three at a time? Depth of FieldAnother poster mentioned the nice out of focus portions of this photograph but under close examination it appears that some of this may have been achieved in the darkroom or perhaps even later with a copy of the photo. Is that possible? [This was imaged from the original glass negative. - Dave] Accentuating the negative>> some of this may have been achieved in the darkroom or perhaps even later with a copy of the photo Messing with the apparent depth of field on the negative is extremely unlikely, almost impossible, but touching up negatives was common. I worked in a portrait studio in the 1980s, and "spotted" negatives (and prints) with a fine-point brush, hiding blemishes & wrinkles. [This negative, like most of the H&E portraits, was marked up with a pen or pencil to add highlights. - Dave] When I first started retouching...back in the early seventies, we would lightly use the edge of an X-acto blade to carefully remove the silver layer of black and white photos to remove darker areas. This was pretty harsh, and you could easily damage the photo if not careful. By that I mean you could tear into the paper backing. Soon came the use of iodine bleaches, that would lift the silver more gently, and leave the emulsion intact. Again, care and experience was key, as too much bleach,or too long a wait to neutralize would bleach the image to pure white. It was fun in a way, but I'd rather use Photoshop now. I'll leave retouching E6 transparencies for another time. You may as well have been doing brain surgery. Bunny and Mr, MarshallI am reading a book about WW2 leaders and Mrs. Roosevelt's name came up. She contacted General George C. Marshall and asked him to put her husband back into a combat unit after he was hospitalized. She apologized for using her position to get this. Marshall replied that it was "always alright to pull strings and favors if what you wanted was a more dangerous job than the one you had." Sounds like quite a woman. Real looker too. (The Gallery, D.C., Harris + Ewing, Portraits)
Condition Red: 1941
... meant pressed shirt. A brand new one for the photo! And no color coding on the wires? That would make for some difficult fault tracing. If ... schematic. Aircraft wiring Aircraft wiring isn't color-coded, even in this day and age. In larger and more complex planes the ... (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/17/2012 - 10:39pm -

December 1941. "Electronics technician, Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Akron, Ohio." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer, OWI. View full size. Beer Barrel PolkaOh, I don't want her you can have her she's too fat for me! Looks like this Goodyear worker is wearing a LOCKHEED I.D. badge. What's up with that? Date Night?Maybe she was going out after her factory shift. Stuffed shirtNo, I meant pressed shirt. A brand new one for the photo! And no color coding on the wires? That would make for some difficult fault tracing. If she has a date tonight, she needs to fix her nails and get some Visine in those bloodshot eyes. Good jobLooks like the numbers on the wiring match up with the schematic. Aircraft wiringAircraft wiring isn't color-coded, even in this day and age. In larger and more complex planes the wires have numbers printed on them every foot, but in small planes they're just white or pale tan. DefinitelyA Lockheed ID Badge and button below that. Goodyear, Akron, Ohio assembled the Vaught Corsair FG-XX version(s) during WWII. Goodyear was probably just primarily an assembler of parts made by other companies with the tools and technology for the job. A search for “Corsair Subcontractors” turned up a reference to a center wing section made by Willys-Overland( a car company), Toledo, Ohio. If the contract(s) were large enough, Lockheed probably set up shop in a Goodyear plant in Akron for Goodyear and other assemblers of the Corsair. Yes, she dressed for the photo. [The smaller button is a union badge for Aeronautical Lodge 727. -Dave] ColorlessWhen I started my engineering career, I was told rather bluntly to "knock that s**t off" when I turned in an assembly drawing specifying color-coded wires. Numbers are the way to go. It seems you never know when you're going to have to rely on a color-blind assembler or repairman. In light of that experience, I have no idea why my Chrysler has color-coded wiring harnesses. Color BlindI remember when I was in tech school, our automotive electronics instructor was color blind. He made us use fluorescent highlighters to trace the colored wires out on the schematic so he could check our work! Talk about the blind leading the blind! (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2)
Mustang by the Tail: 1942
... by Alfred Palmer. I didn't suppose that color I didn't suppose that color photography looked that good these days It must be a P-51B... ... (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/21/2012 - 10:34pm -

October 1942. A painter cleans the tail section of a P-51 Mustang fighter prior to spraying with olive-drab camouflage. North American Aviation plant, Inglewood, California. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer. I didn't suppose that colorI didn't suppose that color photography looked that good these days It must be a P-51B......judging by the incline on the spine. Fate of the B-25sThe B-25 in the left background, tail #113178 (or 41-13178) crashed and burned at March Field in Southern California on June 30, 1943. The one on the right, #113180 (or 41-13180), was part of the 340th bomb group, 57th Bombardment Wing, Twelfth Air Force operating in Italy when it was shot down by antiaircraft fire on April 28, 1944. Three crew members, including the pilot were killed; the other four made it back to the base. This is not THE photoThis is not THE photo taken at 1942, it's probably a reprint of the original negative. [This is the original transparency. It is not a print. And Kodachromes don't have negatives. - Dave] (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2)
At Ease: 1943
... Francisco and your photo confirms we definitely got the color correct on our replica projectiles. See below. Living Color How ... Yellow Ordnance Prior to, and into the early days of WW2, yellow was also used to indicate high explosive content, all the way down ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 02/15/2019 - 5:31pm -

1943. " 'At Ease.' Two soldiers in a bomb storage facility at Camp Pendleton, Calif., admiring portrait of a young woman. Pinup of Susan Hayward hangs nearby." Dye destruction print made in 2002 from Frank S. Errigo's original 4x5 Kodachrome. Exhibited in "American Treasures of the Library of Congress." View full size. Taking a BreakI see the Marine has paused while cleaning his M1 Garand to do a little stargazing. Always liked the aroma of Hoppe's No. 9 bore cleaner. Don't ever do what he's doingBecause you can never get the smell of Hoppe's #9 out of a mattress. Ask me how I know! LongevityHoppe's No. 9 is still one of the most popular bore cleaners around. Been around for over 100 years. Tried some of the newer ones, always come back to this one. Every summer, as a kid growing up overseas in the 50s, we would go to the market and buy surplus canteens, knapsacks (as we called them), ammo belts, helmet liners, helmets, etc. Same gear as shown here. Only thing we couldn't get was the M1. Would have liked one of them way back when also. Coast ArtilleryFascinating. The "bombs" in this 1943 photo are marked with stencils unique to Coast Artillery seacoast weapons. By rotating the photo I could make out "1400-LBS" (weight) and "14 S.C.G." for "14-inch caliber sea coast gun." Yellow paint indicated armor piercing projectiles. Turns out the military actually converted many Coast Artillery projectiles to aerial bombs by affixing fins and attachment points for hanging in bomb bays. Perhaps that's what's going on in this photo, since there were no Coast Artillery guns at Camp Pendleton. BTW, we're restoring a Coast Artillery battery near San Francisco and your photo confirms we definitely got the color correct on our replica projectiles. See below. Living ColorHow unusual to see WWII-era photos in "living color." After all, those of us who grew up in the 1950s (when the war still loomed large in conversation and in Hollywood) were sure that WWII took place in black and white. [We have hundreds more. -Dave]] Ordnance-wise,Nice rack. OddThat they'd be using commercial, as opposed to government issued, bore cleaner. [Just because something is a brand-name product doesn't mean it can't be "government-issued." - Dave] Yellow OrdnancePrior to, and into the early days of WW2, yellow was also used to indicate high explosive content, all the way down to hand grenades and mortar shells. However, it was found that yellow was a lousy color from a camouflage standpoint, so at some point in the summer of 1942 the paint color for HE ordnance was changed to OD green with yellow markings. On a different subject, there are [were] two Camp Pendletons during the war, the most famous being the USMC base in California which is still in operation to this day. The other was a National Guard camp on the Virginia coast, which was used for coastal artillery training. Since both of the soldiers in the photo are, well, SOLDIERS [as opposed to Marines], I wonder if the photo was taken at the camp in Virginia instead? Cover ArtCould be a cover for The Saturday Evening Post by Norman Rockwell. Hoppe's No. 9 SolventGetting ready to buy some this week for my new H&K VP9 9mm pistol. Was on active duty from 1970-1981 and weapons cleaner was second in my memory only to the smell of expended brass on the firing ranges during recruit training. In the barracks though, the stench of Brasso and burning boot polish reigned as king most of the time! (Kodachromes, Handsome Rakes, Pretty Girls, WW2)
Power of Tower: 1942
... Please keep 'em coming. Great stuff. Popular color Apparently that shade of yellow was very popular with the wartime ... That is the yellow here, it's a Federal Standard paint color. Combat gliders Those were the helicopters of their day. And that ... (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 05/28/2018 - 6:52pm -

May 1942. "Marine lieutenant by the power towing plane for the gliders at Parris Island, South Carolina." 35mm Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information. View full size. Naval Aircraft FactoryFairly sure this is an N3N primary trainer. Like many US biplanes from the interwar period, they were an attractive little machine. Kodachrome!I love these Kodachromes! Please keep 'em coming. Great stuff. Popular color Apparently that shade of yellow was very popular with the wartime suppliers. I have seen it multiple times on planes, jigs, and plant equipment. Wonder if there was some reason it was so widely used. [It's a primer coat. -tterrace] Yellow Butyrate DopeThe yellow in this case is not zinc chromate primer. It's conventional yellow butyrate airplane dope. Zinc Chromate was used in some applications over aluminum to make the paint stick better by chemically interacting with the oxide layer that forms over bare aluminum. Dope doesn't stick to any non-porous material very well (except itself), so this was necessary to have it stick. It also reduces corrosion when exposed to salt water (which is relevant because the planes were delivered by ship - and corrosion damaged entire manufacturing runs of various airplanes). It's not a pure yellow, it's more greenish (as shown in the B-25 pictures). This airplane had some area of aluminum, but a lot of it was covered with fabric (linen, probably) that needed to be painted with something to seal it up, hence, airplane dope. It would seal the material against moisture, and also shrink and draw the covering tight. Why they chose yellow, I don't know, but the standard paint scheme at the time was yellow and a medium-light blue. That is the yellow here, it's a Federal Standard paint color. Combat glidersThose were the helicopters of their day. And that must have been one of the most scary piloting jobs ever. Landing an aircaft without propulsion, under enemy fire, in the dark, on unknwon (and next to invisible) terrain - sounds like a crash to everybody else. No second guesses (a.k.a. go-around), either. The US glider pilots had a "G" on their wings. And rightfully claimed "G is for guts". There are two very good accounts, one by a Gerard M. Devlin (Silent Wings), and one by John L. Lowden (Silent Wings at War). And the crazy things they did with medevac and bungees. But all things considered recreational glider flying is much preferable. Yellow PerilThe yellow was standard naval aviation color for a trainer plane. It was simply a conspicuous marking of a beginning pilot, to warn other pilots and ground crew not to necessarily expect normal or competent behavior! Trainers were often referred to as "Yellow Perils." Tighten your seatbelt and helmet straps! (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2)
0001, 0002, 0003 . . .
... earliest decade to have coloured photos like these? [Color photography got its start in the 1890s. Kodachrome color film made its debut in 1935. - Dave] Re: Kodachrome "Kodachrome ... (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Factories, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/05/2012 - 6:38pm -

October 1942. Inglewood, Calif. "Parts are marked with this pneumatic numbering machine in North American Aviation's sheet metal department." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer, Office of War Information. View full size. Coloured PhotosI love these early coloured photos, they just make this time period so real and, well, normal. Sometimes it's hard to imagine the early 20th century without thinking that everything happened in sepia. Was the 1940s the earliest decade to have coloured photos like these? [Color photography got its start in the 1890s. Kodachrome color film made its debut in 1935. - Dave] Re: Kodachrome"Kodachrome color film made its debut in 1935." Or as I refer to it, the year colors were invented. Time lagInteresting that all of my professionally-taken baby pictures were hand tinted in the early 30's. Wonder why they weren't in color to begin with. [That would have been well before color print film (and developing) was available for the average camera. Kodachrome was a transparency film, first used for 16mm movies and then slides. It was not a print film. - Dave] Palmer's LightingOne interesting thing about these great old war production photos that Dave's been posting is the lighting. It looks like they kept the rest of the production area dark and then just lit the immediate working space. It would be fun to see a "making-of" shot. Ummm . . .What a doll. Foy Las Vegas Pneumatic DollsDo you think S. California was really a magnet in the early years of the film industry for attractive people hoping to become stars (and who later found themselves, cute as they were, running pneumatic numbering machines)? More LikelyWhile it's true that Hollywood was a magnet for attractive young women who would find their way into war work it think a couple of other factors are at work here. I have a suspicion that the photographers were looking very hard for attractive women for the photos. I suppose it's possible that Palmer might have found the two prettiest girls in the department to pose for this photo. The other factor is that many of the women who worked in the war plants were the young wives of soldiers, sailors and airmen for whom California might be a long-term base before being shipped out. I don't suppose it would be unheard of for them to come to California while their husbands were based in the area and then gravitate into the war plants after - or even before - they shipped out. Lighting[A preliminary note: We know that Alfred Palmer used floodlights for at least some of these large format Kodachromes. Hand-held floodlights and cabling are visible in a number of his photographs. - Dave] Kodachrome, back in the day, was an absurdly slow film; that was one of the many prices you paid for shooting in color. Shots like this one were done with flashbulbs, and quite large ones. (My educated guess is that this was shot with one large bulb in a large reflector, off to camera left.) That was done, in part, to provide the necessary *amount* of illumination, but also to provide the right *color temperature* light - the floodlights in a factory would have made everything look horribly yellowish or orangeish, and light coming in through skylights and windows would likely have been too blueish. You can still get the same look today with slide film, a high-powered flashgun, and a camera with a leaf-shutter that synchronizes flash at high speeds: well-lit subjects in foreground, inky blackness in the background. Quite aside from the technical and aesthetic effects, this technique meant - for the wartime Kodachromes you see on Shorpy - that you only got to see the parts of the factories that, frankly, the government wanted you to see. No need to worry overly about accidentally disclosing wartime secrets off in the background of a photo when everything but the main subject is shrouded in darkness... Unsafe, but I look fabulousShe's wearing jewelry on a pneumatic press machine? Egads! The parts on the table are rib sections; these fit between the longitudinal spars of a wing or control surface. The parts in the rear are fuselage formers; you can see the notches for the stringers that run down the side of the plane. North American Inglewood built both B-25 bombers and P-51 fighers during late 1942; judging from the size of the formers, these are probably P-51 Mustang parts. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Factories, WW2)
Leviathan: 1926
... of the Callahan Street crossing. It was built soon after WW2. Leviathan in color Sadly there are no contemporary color images of Ps-4s in their early ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/17/2012 - 10:13pm -

Washington, D.C., or vicinity circa 1926. "Southern R.R. Co. Crescent Locomotive 1396." View full size. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. Queen Crescent LimitedA short history of the Queen Crescent Limited. 1396, 1926 Still puffin'I have lived in Chattanooga and more than once rode on the excursion trains pulled by this locomotive! (see history link) I must compliment Dave on the enlargements of small details in the photos. Reminds me of the movie "Call Northside 777" in which the murderer is caught because the photo lab enlarges the date printed on a newspaper held by a newsboy! Ever tried newspapers, Dave? [Yes indeedy. - Dave] One of your best yet.This is one of your best yet. Very handsome. Cheers to you and the National Photo Company. Southern ClassA Great Railway. Great class of loco: Ps4. Same as the one in the Smithsonian. WOW!! ExcursionsAs far as excursions, you're probably thinking of Southern Ry. #4501, a freight engine, which was bought back from a shortline, and painted-and-otherwise-gussied-up to represent a passenger engine. It pulled many excursions starting in 1966. The real SR passenger steamers didn't make it past 1953 or so. (When the management realized steam excursions would be a real crowd-pleaser, the one in the Smithsonian was already "trapped inside.") WowBravo. Old 1396Beautiful engine absolutely beautiful! She was built 9 years & 9 months before I came along. Reminds me of the troop trains in the 1940s, heading south on the L&N Line as they passed through my hometown in central Kentucky, a little burg called Wildie in Rockcastle County. Wish I was back there now. Greatest achievementI maintain that the steam locomotive remains mankind's greatest accomplishment. WOWThis photo was taken in Southern Railway's yard in Alexandria, near the King Street station - if you look just to the right of the most distant power pole, you can see the George Washington Masonic Temple. No. 1396 was one of the first 12 PS4s delivered in Southern Railway's new "Sylvan Green" paint scheme. Most were lettered "Southern" on the tender, but no. 1396 was lettered "Crescent Limited" (not "Queen & Crescent" - that refers to the Cincinnati - Chattanooga - New Orleans route, and was applied to no. 6689) and assigned to the new, all-Pullman luxury train of the same name. Alexandria YardThe George Washington National Masonic Memorial was dedicated in 1923 but not mostly completed until 1932, so I don't believe that appears adjacent to the far telegraph pole. I believe this view is looking roughly east, with the wooden yard office to the right of the locomotive. About where the boxcars are out of view in the distance is where Hoofe's Run crossed under the tracks. -- Frank R. Scheer, Railway Mail Service Library Museum PieceThe same class of locomotive photographed by me in 2006 when I visited the Smithsonian's railroad section. My favoriteThis is my favorite of the images posted on Shorpy this past year. I don't know why; I'm not interested in railroads or big machines. I keep coming back to it, though. Perhaps it's because despite my disinterest I admire this magnificent machine and the work that went into creating and maintaining it. It makes me think about traveling and I imagine how people of the time would have looked at it in awe and thought of the big cities and world beyond their own region. Thanks Dave and crew for the work you've done and thanks to all the insightful Shorpy posters. Best wishes for the new year, and many more intriguing photos and enlightening posts. Looking east toward Callahan StreetThis view of the Southern Railway yard in Alexandria is looking east. The Masonic Temple would be behind the photographer's left shoulder. The little yard shacks were on the other side of Callahan Street. These shacks were there as late as 1980 or so as I have a photo of them. The roundhouse was to the right of the locomotive, probably out of the picture. The building to the right may be the yard office. The Northern Virginia Model RR club occupied a building in this approximate location for about 20 years from the early '50s until the early '70s. Herby's Ford was located to the left of the photo, on the opposite side of the Callahan Street crossing. It was built soon after WW2. Leviathan in colorSadly there are no contemporary color images of Ps-4s in their early days, but my friend Tom Alderman of Mayretta, GA has given us an idea of what it looked like on that day in Alexandria when 1396 posed for the camera. (The Gallery, Natl Photo, Railroads)
Rural Mother: 1936
... . Also a lot of comments from people who seem to think color photography started around 1960. Poverty exaggeration Ok, this ... My brother did not want me to visit them. I served in WW2, which I enjoyed because I had been working since I was 14 and it was nice ... 
 
Posted by Ken - 07/05/2009 - 2:29am -

March 1936. "Mother and baby of family of nine living in field on U.S. Route 70 near the Tennessee River." 35mm nitrate negative by Carl Mydans for the Farm Security Administration. View full size. SonsRose, And notice that the boy you mention (the one on our right) is the only one wearing shoes. It looks like he's standing on maybe his father's feet--there's somebody else standing off the camera edge. But imagine: The clothes that they're wearing might've been their only clothes! Just to reiterate: there was no choice of what they could wear from day to day. What they have on now was all they (might've) had for possibly months at a time. "How do I get to the Susquehanna Hat Company?" What happened to them?While it's certainly disheartening to see that kind of abject poverty, the family probably fared better over the next decade. The TVA started bringing electricity to that area around the time of this photo and Tennessee had a pretty robust wartime economy. The draft board generally didn't take men with nine children so the father would have been around to find steady work. So however bad it may have been you can at least be confident it got better. And yet the boy is smilingAnd yet the boy is smiling :) Mother of povertyThis photo made cry. What more clear image of poverty in America could there be? A flour sack for a skirt and a safety pin holding a tattered sweater. I ache for her children and wonder what happened to this family. One bright spot is the boy smiling to his sister while holding her toe. Tatters...They may be poor material wise with their tatters and rags on their back, but they are rich in their love for each other. Mother of povertyThis is the worst case of poverty I have ever seen that wasn't from the third world, but look at them they are together, even able to smile, by far this picture is the best example of "the great depression". fakeThe picture is of far higher quality than existed in that era. It's obviously a fake. ["That era," the mid-1930s, when photography was 100 years old, saw some of the best photographs ever made - the work of Ansel Adams, for example. And of course a few minutes of Googling will show this to be a well-known Depression-era image in the Library of Congress archives. Comments like these are a good opportunity to point out that the farther back you go, the better and sharper the pictures get, because the recording media were bigger. Two examples are here (1865) and here (1913). As well as here and here and here. - Dave] Re: No exaggeration"And yeah, glass plate negatives are amazing. But even 35mm film actually carries more information than most digitals: ISO 100 35mm has an effective resolution of 10 megapixels, and when you up the negative size to that of a view camera or the 8x10 glass plates, you're talking resolutions and image quality that today's cameras can't touch." YOU'RE RIGHT ABOUT THAT ! No exaggerationIn addition to reading "Let us Now Praise Famous Men," check out the photos of Jacob Riis and read "How the Other Half Lives." Yes, muckrakers, but they were not making up the poverty they found and photographed. When people who were doing *well* had only 2 or 3 sets of clothing, there just wasn't as much "extra" around to give to the poor. Using flour sacks and sugar sacks was incredibly common - so common that it is a trope in literature of the time. Even solidly middle-class families "turned" collars and facings on their clothing when it wore to holes, to use the other side, and every family had a rag bag in which they saved *every* scrap of old clothing for other purposes. I guess in this day of cheap clothes made by slave laborers in poison-filled factories in China, its hard to believe anyone treated clothes as so precious that they were saved and worn until they were in this state, huh? And yeah, glass plate negatives are amazing. But even 35mm film actually carries more information than most digitals: ISO 100 35mm has an effective resolution of 10 megapixels, and when you up the negative size to that of a view camera or the 8x10 glass plates, you're talking resolutions and image quality that today's cameras can't touch. Rural mother 1936Oh how I wish I could take the doubting thomases back with me to the North East of Scotland during the time that this stunning photograph was taken. I am glad that it has been brought up to watchable standard by digital magic or whatever. I can still remember my grandfather filling his boots with straw to keep the cold/wet out before going out to the field to plough or cut corn with a scythe. He also used the very same material to wipe his bottom. Granny had a grain sack for a skirt and wore clogs. My favourite time of day was when she put the 'hen's pot' out to cool. I invariably ate the potatoes and haven't tasted better since. Money-wise it was a very poor time but life had a richness difficult to achieve these days. Re: Fake>> The picture is of far higher quality than existed in that era. It's obviously a fake. We get a lot of comments like this, I guess from younger people, or people who have never been to a museum. They don't realize that the farther back you go, the better and sharper professionally taken photographs get, because the recording media were much, much larger. An 8-by-10 glass plate negative is 80 times as large as a 35mm film frame, or the image sensor in a digital camera. Two examples are here (1865) and here (1913). As well as here and here and here. Also a lot of comments from people who seem to think color photography started around 1960. Poverty exaggerationOk, this photo is an example of early photo-journalism. The family could very well have been homeless and living in a lean-to or a wooden box on top of a truck chassis- during the summer, anyway. But the depiction of poverty is exaggerated- think about it- if someone steered the photographer toward the family, then others in the community knew they were there. There's no way a family can dress like that and not receive donations of used clothes. These rags were put on to evoke sympathy for the plights of many during the depression. Don't get me wrong - shock value was probably needed to raise support for many valuable social programs that came about because of the depression. But how long could a family dress like that and not receive donations from others, no matter how bad off the community was. [Most of these migrants, refugees from the Dust Bowl farms of the Great Plains, were not especially welcome in the communities where they dropped anchor, and people often did whatever they could to get them to leave. You might want to read up a little more on the Great Depression. A good start would be "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee with photos by Walker Evans. Or "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. - Dave] Not an exaggeration"There's no way a family can dress like that and not receive donations of used clothes." My mother was a teenager during those years and remembered how so many people were driven to desperation. Her comment was "there was always someone trying to cheat you." Two or three years into the Depression the do-gooders began to run out of sympathy and "used clothes." And after five more years of no improvement they began to fear things would never turn around and that they would end up in the same circumstances. There were just too many newly poor people and not enough people with excess resources to balance things out. BenIf anyone was ever interested in trying to achieve that kind of detail today, I'd highly suggest buying an old used medium format camera and using some 120 roll film. I have a couple of Yashica TLR's which were considered substandard in the 50's and 60's, but their quality still makes a 35 SLR look like a cheap point and shoot. It's not the camera that makes the pictures better, but the larger negative available in 120 film. Not only do you get more detail, but the color depth is far more realistic. ClothesMy Gramma has saved some clothes that her mother made from flour sacks. She also has some made from linen and wool they spun and wove themselves, when they were more prosperous. She lived in a house with a dirt floor and didn't wear shoes in the summer. The Face of the Great DepressionThank you Mr. Caruso. I echo the response from Dave....We read in history books about the Great Depression and over the years, in our mind it is simply a swirl of facts and figures, of almost dispassionate removal that was the reality. While it has been said that hindsight is 20/20, I think it can also be argued that hindsight, especially from such a distance can be sterile becoming almost become an illusion, an event without a substance. Hopefully this will once again place it into a reality ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSShPnOS15Y Dale Oh My GoshI'm 15 years of age and I had no idea that the Great Depression was that bad. This picture really oppened my eyes to the extreme conditions at that time. Thank you for this reality. Reality CheckI have a picture on my desk showing my mother during the depression. You can see her bones because at 5'7" she weighed 85 pounds...just from the simple lack of food. Each girl in the family had two dresses and each boy had two pairs of overalls - one to wear and one to wash. By "wash", I mean using a metal tub over an open fire. Mostly they went barefoot (in the Arizona desert) because if they had shoes, they were too valuable to wear everyday. In the picture my mother is looking directly at the camera and her expression is almost exactly the same as the look on the face of a shell shocked combat veteran. As I said, I keep this small black and white photo on my desk so that if I ever, ever have even a moment of thinking that I'm having a hard day I can look at my mother's face and get a reality check. Barefoot KidsMy parents grew up in the depression. When I was a kid (in the 60s) going outside barefoot was STRICTLY FORBIDDEN, reason being that in their minds if you weren't wearing shoes it was because you didn't have any, and therefore were poor, which they viewed as something to be ashamed of. Making doThe habits of the depression generation persisted into the better days of the '40s. I remember my mother repairing worn sheets by splitting them down the middle and sewing the good edges together to prolong their life. My dad brought home flour sacks from the restaurant where he worked. My mother made dish cloths and pillow cases from them. Some of the sacks were made from patterned material for dresses. The branding on the others washed out easily. To this day I an reluctant to discard clothing. ClothesMy parents did not allow us to wear jeans (which we didn't own) or sneakers because they weren't real clothing, but only worn if you owned nothing else. Believe me we weren't rich either. Mother of NineThank you so much for sharing this. I was born in 1977, but just hearing these stories helps me to realize that we are so spoiled and really puts things into perspective. Amen! Thanks, dalecaruso!I'm going to show this to my 7th grade students who LOVED the Newbery Medal-winning book "Out of the Dust" by Karen Hesse! Amazing...moving...thank you. The habits remained - for good or badMy parents grew up in the Depression. Members of their generation, roughly those born 1920-1935, often find it difficult to throw out anything "good". In my parents' case, I was left with stacks of thousands upon thousands of moldering magazines and newspapers, piles of old shingles, 2x4s, chunks of vinyl siding, and old cardboard; hundreds upon hundreds of doilies, knick-knacks, and figurines; and tons of worthless, useless plywood and cheap wood furniture. The cry was, "I might need it someday!" and "It'll be worth GOOD MONEY one day!" and "You're so wicked and wasteful and lazy to want to throw it out!". They were wrong in every single solitary instance, no exceptions. The figurines now go for five to ten cents each on eBay (and don't sell at that price); the shingles melted together into a big unusable pile; the 2x4s and cardboard rotted to dust; the doilies were attacked with mold; the magazines were destroyed by water and age; the furniture was rickety and undesirable in its shoddy construction and unattractive, unmarketable poor style. It all went away to the dump as useless, worthless, unrecyclable (because of the mold) garbage - and it cost over a thousand dollars to have it hauled away. And I'm not the only one. There are internet groups made up of people in their 40s and 50s who are, like me, dealing with the unhealthy hoarding habits of their Depression-era parents who have passed on. But we, the children, are not the ones hurt the most by this sickness. The older generation itself is harmed most of all. The mold and dust gathered by the things they've hoarded endangers their health. The sheer bulk of the hoard can endanger them in case of fire. And since they can't find what they've hoarded, they end up buying the same things over and over again, which reduces their ability to provide for themselves. No North American generation before this one has suffered from this level of hoarding, and I doubt any one after it will. Earlier generations didn't overbuy but also weren't afraid to discard; later generations might overbuy but likewise aren't afraid to recycle or discard. Re: Hoarders I would have to seriously question the sweeping and wide swath of the brush you painted this generation with. My parents lived through the depression and the dust bowl, as did my dads' 12 brothers and sisters. and the 5 siblings of my mothers' family. And not a hoarder among them. I am sure they used things longer and valued what they had more than we do, but I hardly consider this a "disorder". Now I am sure some did, but your statement to me really portrays this generation as unhealthy mentally, and I am just a little offended by it. Oh that we today were as mentally stable as they. And if "There are internet groups made up of people in their 40s and 50s who are, like me, dealing with the unhealthy hoarding habits of their Depression-era parents who have passed on", well then I would say, perhaps it is this weak-kneed generation, who need support groups because, "Oh No, Mamma kept things a Long Long time", are the ones who are unhealthy. You do this unbelievable generation a great disservice. Future Hoarders of America Unite!You know, I don't look at the faces of these little ones and concern myself with the idea that their biggest issue in their senior years is going to be that they held on to too much stuff instead of throwing it out. When your clothes are being held together with twine and your mother is wearing a cotton feed bag as a skirt, it's kind of easy to see how, in the future, when you're an old woman, you're probably going to hang on to every scrap and see its potential usefulness someday. It's amazing how differently our consumerist culture sees items today. How often I've longed to be able to hold onto a toaster that could work just fine if I had someone who could fix it for me. But instead, appliances today aren't meant to last for more than a few years and then off to dump with them. Our landfills are overcrowded with plasticized items that will never, ever decompose - plastic bags, water bottles, take out containers...the list is endless. I hate to politicize a picture but I can honestly see how having nothing more than the holey shirt on your back would make you take stock when one day you had tremendous bounty. We could learn a lot from these people and their troubles and how to see potential treasure in trash. Alive and wellPoverty can be because of chance or personal choices. Back in the times of the Depression it was heaped on people by powers out of their control. I see it today right here in Arkansas where I live and in my own neighborhood. I live in a small town of about 5600 and even in what is supposedly the world's most rich and powerful country people are lining up at the free food banks and food giveaways, receving government commodities and waiting in ine at the free medical clinic that is run by area churches and staffed with Doctors and Nurses who volunteer their time for free. Just walk into Walmart on the 1st of the month, they way some families are dressed would break your heart. But then you have the victims of bad personal choices. There is a single other in my neighborhood that recently lost her job because she failed a drug test. She has 3 children. Everyone in the neighborhood knows she sells her food stamps for alcohol. She would buy just enough (barely) food for them to get by and sell the rest If it were not for the kindness of neighbors her children would not have any decent clothes. She was just kicked out of what is very decent public housing where she was paying $16.00 a month rent because she had her alcoholic boyfriend living there with her. Her poor choices affected not only her children but many people in the neighborhood (who at their own expense would buy extra food so they could feed her children or spend money to buy clothes for them) who have tried to help her for years. In her children I see the NEXT generation of American poverty waiting to happen and it is so sad. HoardersMy parents are children of the Depression, too. And my father most definitely instilled in me the sense that one doesn't waste or discard anything useful. He has 2 barns and a shed filled with stuff, much of which I'll have to deal with after he's gone. But you know what? Virtually everything he has is valuable! His shed is filled with dishes and small appliances and the like, which has supplied many of his grandchildren when they went away to college or got their first apartment. He has one of nearly every tool known to man, and freely loans or gives them away. He paid cash for a brand new truck recently, using the proceeds from sale of scrap copper and iron he's been saving in the plum thicket. (He's never owed money on a car in my lifetime). He loves to give to others (it's nearly impossible to leave a visit empty-handed), and a lifetime of saving and storing means he has no shortage of things to give away. Because of my upbringing, it's very hard for me to discard anything that still has value, just because I don't need it any more. But I've learned from my dad - somebody needs that, so give it away! I understand that some hoarders are truly mentally ill. But to say that all Depression children who refuse to discard things that might be useful are "wrong in every single solitary instance, no exceptions" is absolute hogwash. The DepressionAnyone who says these photos are exaggerated or fake has never talked to someone who lived during that time. My mother lived on a farm during that period, and though she didn't have much that came from a store, they were able to eat and eat well. My father's family were poor tennant farmers on unproductive land and frequently had meals like "grease smeared on bread"....try to imagine that one. With several children, all but one had to quit school at 13 to earn a living. My husband's family has pictures of the children looking just like these - torn overalls and bare feet. Do some real research in your own family's past. Family HistoryMy father's family had a farm in southwest Nebraska during the Depression, so they were able to grow their own food and eat fairly well. My mother's paternal grandfather was a Methodist minister there, which was very rough since he was dependent on what the local community could pay, which wasn't much and people had an odd idea about what made a suitable gift. So instead of eggs and chickens, which Great-Grandpa would have taken in a heartbeat (he had 5 teenage sons!), people gave him things like fancy hankies, which he had no use for, and I found 50 years later still in the gift boxes. I know the Depression had a profound impact on my grandfather; he hated to throw anything away. When my mother cleaned out Grandpa's house in the late 80's she had to throw out dumpsters of metal pie plates, shopping bags, twine, bottles, newspapers, magazines and God knows what else. AgreedMy parents did not allow us to wear jeans (which we didn't own) or sneakers because they weren't real clothing, but only worn if you owned nothing else. Believe me we weren't rich either. I would have said this if you didn't. We had sneakers for gym class and gym class only. The picture, the video, the hoarding.Two things struck me about that picture: the caked on dirt on the mother's feet and the smile on the boy's face. Sure, I had heard the phrase "dressed in flour sacks." But, there's something about an image - seeing it. It hits home. The video, The Face of the Great Depression, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSShPnOS15Y from a previous comment. At first, honestly, I thought, "Can't the pictures move faster?" Then I looked, and listened, and let time stand still for a brief moment. By the end, I was crying. The license plate in the last photo was 1939. My mother would have been 13. NOW IT GET IT. Well, I'm beginning to. A second generation child on the South Side of Chicago, she always told stories of a her gang of kids distracting the cart owner so other kids could run by - stealing whatever vegetables they could grab. They would start little fires at the curb and roast them on a stick or boil them in a pot of water. She said that's why, as an adult, she hated boiled onions or potatoes. But, the stories she told, of washing out her underclothes each night, sleeping 4 to a bed, lard and bread sandwiches...I somehow cleaned up the images and made them all pretty. I left out what it smells like if you haven't had a bath. Or, what it must have felt like to really, really be hungry. Mom hoarded. Born in 1926 she left me the legacy of wall to wall, floor to ceiling piles of National Geographic magazines and "collectors" tins." "These will be worth something someday," she chided...and promised. They weren't. Well, some of it was valuable - more from memories of her than replacement cost. More than anything, I wish she could have culled her stuff so she had more room to live. Sure, it was a burden to empty. But it was easier for me to let go of her junk than it was for her to unload the fear of being "without." I can live with that. Everyday I understand and accept her more. One little photo... Can teach so much. The Great DepressionI've read the comments about this picture and echo the feelings of distress that people have had to exist under these conditions. We only have to look at some of the present day third world countries to see the same thing. Thank God that that level of poverty has never touched me. I was born in 1927 and raised, with my sister, in a single parent home. My Mother took in washing and ironing to make a living for us, and though we didn't have an abundance, we never went to bed hungry. She bought used adult clothes and cut them down to fit us (our sunday school and church clothes). No one told me that times were hard so I didn't know it until I was grown. The hobos (Hoover Tourists) used to get off the trains near our house and come to the door begging food. My Mother always made them a peanut butter sandwich. I spent my days in school or outside playing with my friends, I had a glorious childhood. It pains me to see today's children confined to the house, afraid to go outside alone, with only a TV or computer for a companion. So many children and young adults are overweight and under exercised. The Depression was hard on a lot of people but, as a child, I skated through it and wouldn't trade my childhood memories for being a child today. Where in SW Nebraska?Hello- A friend of mine introduced me to this website. I, too, am from southwest Nebraska. Where in SW Nebraska was your family originally from? MJ The DepressionI really liked reading all the comments. I intend to get the book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by Agee. I was born in 1921, the seventh child in a family of 10. My father died of TB in October 1929. Our church had a dinner after the service yesterday. I noticed some people not eating all the food they had put on their plates. I told them my clean plate was a reflection of living through the Depression, when at mealtime I would hand my plate to my mother with the words "All I can have. please." Every child in the family, when they were old enough, gave most of the money they earned to our mother. In the early 1930s our school clothes and shoes would be ordered by mail from Sears and sometime they would arrive days after school started. We lived in northwest Detroit and most of the kids had fathers with good jobs. In 1936 my oldest brother started to build a home near Mount Clemens, Michigan. A family pitched a tent in a field across the street from him and lived much like the family in this picture. My brother did not want me to visit them. I served in WW2, which I enjoyed because I had been working since I was 14 and it was nice to be free of responsibility. And seeing Europe was wonderful. I am a tourist at heart. Yes! Not getting killed and living into the Internet age is wonderful. Nebraska! With family now on the West Coast in Oregon and Washington we have been driving across this country about once a year. We like Nebraska and have been driving across that state on old U.S. 30, and find it much more enjoyable than I-80. Please try this some time. For those who don't believeRead "The Worst Hard Time" by Tim Egan. Never had heard of "dust pneumonia" until reading this. Also, a section of diary entries is just heartbreaking. Poverty and desolation on a scale unimaginable today. (The Gallery, Carl Mydans, Great Depression, Rural America)
Young Granddad: 1963
... SoCal by the hundreds of thousands in the years following WW2. Built-in A/C was a practically unheard of option in these houses, but ... on Tony's profile you'll see that he is 18. - Dave] Color Magic I love Shorpy. Work today was very slow so, um, I sorta spent ... 
 
Posted by Tony W. - 09/17/2011 - 8:08pm -

This is my dad as a toddler with Grandpa washing the car, probably around 1963 in Los Angeles. Scanned from a Kodak safety negative. View full size. Hunky GrandpaSimply cannot ignore this perfect-looking gent. This appreciative female thanks you for remembering that ladies enjoy a gorgeous view, too. Hubba HubcapHey, Grandpa was good lookin'! A choice specimen indeedThe Volvo, I mean. PLCF CenterfoldThe Rambler, the Volvo, Junior's sandals -- this could be cover art for the Summer 1963 issue of Progressive Left Coast Family. What did your dad end up doing as a grownup? What was Granddad's line of work? A great photo, very evocative. A Rambler *and* a VolvoWow, a Rambler Classic, *and* a Volvo (looks like a 544) in the same driveway. And your dad is about my age (49). Great picture. Thanks for sharing this one, Tony. When I was a kid, my parents owned a Rambler, and my dad was always fascinated with Volvos, mainly the 122. Wow!Reminds me of Don Draper. Yum!! OH MYGrandpa looks mighty fine! They don't make 'em like that anymore!Chain link fences that is... Notice the top of the fence. Those barbs opened up the wrist of my friend when we were kids back in Newark NJ in about 1960. There were hedges behind the fence and he reached over while passing by on his bike to pull off a leaf. Zzzziiippp. Several hours and a spools worth of sutures and he was okay. Thankfully, fence tops are folded over now. Gangster WhitesI had just gotten my driver's license in 1963 and I remember cleaning whitewalls with a Brillo pad, just like Grampa is doing. ApexThe absolute apex of American civilization captured in this photo. That's it folks. It'll never happen again. And for dessert I'll haveAn order of beefcake, circa 1963! Hubba hubba!Grandpa can hang his hat at MY house ANY time! I cringedIt's odd to read all these lustful comments about my grandpa, but hey, whatever floats your boat! My grandpa was (and still is) a chief engineer on tuna boats. My father also became a chief engineer on American tuna boats, first starting in San Diego and then moving to American Samoa. Now he works in the ports and gives his wealth of knowledge about engines to other engineers. To put it bluntly, he's the guy who makes sure boat engines run well enough so you can have a tuna sandwich. Re: I cringedThe cougars do get restless around twilight -- if you don't turn your back on them you'll be fine. My favorite thing here is the bright yellow hose on the green lawn. Something tres Sixties there. You have a good eye for interesting pictures. Pago PagoGreat photo. I probably know your dad (and granddad) as I was here in Pago during the great purse-seiner days of the late 1980s and through the 90s. There are about 23 boats operating here now. Some New Zealand. With Samoa Packing closing down that number may diminish. From Pago Pago, John Wasko Yellow HoseSeeing the yellow water hose reminded me of how my father and uncle, back in the 50s and 60s, would never buy common "garden hose" (like we still have) because it wore out much too quickly. One kink and it's dead. Rather, they would buy low pressure air hose, like the kind used in gas stations. Ten minutes with a hammer and you had a sturdy hose, typically yellow or a dull red, which was probably 25 percent more expensive but would last for years. I still have one I made back in the 70s and use often. HVAC UpgradeNote the window A/C next door. These "breeder boxes" were built hurriedly (but solidly) throughout SoCal by the hundreds of thousands in the years following WW2. Built-in A/C was a practically unheard of option in these houses, but by 1963, even my grandparents had it (courtesy of Sears). My gramp got spiffy and cut a hole in the wall for their unit. Grandpa was such a beefcakeI bet the son and the grandson became great hunks too !! Perfect sandals!Love the sandals on the toddler! Those were the days when sensible people designed sensible summer footwear for children--not the slide-ons you see today. HotnessI sure am glad it was a hot day! There are plenty of things I could say right now...But I think a dreamy sigh will suffice. Stylin'I love how the baby looks so ...tidy. His hair was parted and combed over, just to go outside with Daddy and wash the car. For a candid snap, this is remarkably poised. One more thingI wanted to make one more comment. Someone mentioned above that this reminded them of the "apex of American society". Interesting in that if you look at how most Americans lives back in the 50's and 60's, the typical family had a house that was around 700 square feet, a single car, and a single TV set. My mother along with most everyone else in my family grew up in small houses like those shown in the picture. They also shared rooms with their siblings. Look around today and the typical family home is over 3,000 square feet, there are at least 3 cars in every driveway, at least 2-3 TV sets ( flatscreens) at least 2 computers, a cell phone for every family member, an abundance of shoes and clothing which are bought as cheap disposable items at big box stores, and other endless forms of entertainment. Yet when people speak of "the good times", somehow we always come back to this single era. I think that says an awful lot about the lack of appreciation people these days have for what they've got. My grandparents went through the depression and WW2. 15 years of pain and suffering. You had better believe they appreciated everything they had after it was all over. Even today with the worst recession in decades, I doubt most Americans come close to that level of appreciation. TouchingI LOVE this picture. it really put a smile on my face for so many reasons. The Good Ol' DaysGregg Easterbrook wrote a book, "The Progress Paradox," discussing how people in the U.S. and Europe today are living better than their parents ever did, yet aren't any more happier. Just because we have more things like cell phones, TV's and cars, doesn't make life truly any better. OTOH, if you asked the people of the period in this picture if they thought this was the Apex of American Civilization, you may get a surprising answer. They may have thought life was so much better back in the Twenties or something, where they didn't have to worry about Communist missiles, civil unrest, or atomic radiation causing giant ants to run amok. And yes, Grandpa is mighty fine. Mighty fine. Is he still alive? Is he aware of how much drool he's engendered? P544I had a P544 bought new in 1964 with the only options available, a $5 side mirror and a $35 AM radio, $2,050 complete. A VW at the time sold for around $1,295. Had to crack open a window to close a door, airtight. The 122 was nice as well, but the P444-544 was a true classic. Young father and grandfather!If the toddler is your father in 1963 he married VERY young to have you! And you are very young. [His dad could have been around 40 when he got married. If you click on Tony's profile you'll see that he is 18. - Dave] Color MagicI love Shorpy. Work today was very slow so, um, I sorta spent the last half-hour Shorpy-ing. The older, b&w photos are intriguing but it's these color images from the 1960s that have really caught my imagination today. Color just sorta has a "you are there" effect! So, anyway, thank you Tony and TTerence for sharing these! And, I know you think this is weird Tony, but I have to agree that Grandpa was/is mighty fiiiiiine! '61 Rambler, 60-something P544My parents also had this same combination of cars, a '61 Rambler and a 1960 Volvo P544. I think the Volvo cost about $1800. You are fortunateI love this picture, I was admiring all of the details and your grandfather was quite a handsome man. I was never fortunate to have met either of my grandfathers, so I am quite jealous. It also takes me back to my childhood. GrandpaOh why do we have to get old. SurprisedI just looked around this site, first I saw my mother (Baby Shower 1960). My kids laughed and said look at the rest, Dad! I am the kid with the yellow hose, cowboy tricycle etc., and this is my dad. Ladies, you are right! He was, and still is, a "super hunk" -- 72 now, and I am 49. Great job son, Love Dad Oi!Now that's a real life Charles Atlas! (ShorpyBlog, Member Gallery, Handsome Rakes, Tonypix)
Irma the Ironer: 1941
... photo? I don't see it on the LOC site, and I don't see any color photos for Alfred Palmer in 1941. Did you colorize it? [It's here . - tterrace] [There are lots of color photos by Alfred Palmer from 1941 in the LOC archive. - Dave] ... Dress page. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/05/2012 - 6:39pm -

December 1941. Akron, Ohio. "Manufacture of self-sealing gas tanks, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co." A patriotic ensemble of red, white and blue. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer, Office of War Information. View full size. Palmer vs. HineHer smile alone shows how glad she is to be employed. I have daughters who would kill for this dress.No, really. Irma the Ironer: 1941Where did you find this photo? I don't see it on the LOC site, and I don't see any color photos for Alfred Palmer in 1941. Did you colorize it? [It's here. - tterrace] [There are lots of color photos by Alfred Palmer from 1941 in the LOC archive. - Dave] First, it was all his shirtsNow he has me ironing his gas tanks. As time went byI'm sure there was a better way found to make gas tanks. I can't believe...I'm getting PAID to iron something other than a shirt! Pushing the Iron, er, the EnvelopeThis was very early in the lifetime of U.S.-built self-sealing fuel tanks because patents had just been issued that year. Check Wikipedia for their history. Here's a segment from the 1943 documentary "All Out For Victory" with one of those almost-British narrators. "Yes, I get into working on some queer things. I sure do." http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1785081081357314567# Kitty FoyleThis pic is used on Wikipedia, on the Kitty Foyle Dress page. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, WW2)
And Now the News: 1956
... then. I was also totally ignorant of the silver in those WW2 nickels! (And never imagined that less than a decade later newly-minted US ... smoke The contrast between his shirt and the color of the newspaper is striking; I can definitely see that a different ... 
 
Posted by tterrace - 11/17/2016 - 3:46pm -

November 22, 1956, Larkspur, Calif. My brother reading The San Francisco News, at the time one of four dailies published in the city. He's home on Thanksgiving break from Cal Poly, where he'd just taken up the pipe. We're hosting a big crowd of relatives for dinner, hence the kitchen chair in the living room for overflow dinner seating. In the upper right corner on top of the TV cabinet I see my coin collection, ready for me to show off to my uncles and anybody else I can waylay. At the lower left, an item familiar to just about anybody who grew up in the 50s, an anodized aluminum tumbler. The magazine rack has a Coronet, a Life, undoubtedly some Saturday Evening Posts. To prove we're in California, a souvenir redwood wishing well coin bank on the window seat, along with my mother's African violets in their occasional living state. My sister snapped this Kodachrome slide with brother's Lordox. View full size. Cold Hands I remember those aluminum glasses, how cold they were to hold when full of an icy liquid. Stark HistorySo much to comment upon in this scene, besides it being my last Thanksgiving in the SF Bay area (Hayward). The newspaper headline shows the aftermath of the short-lived 1956 Hungarian Revolution. It had been a busy month of news, even for a fourth-grader, what with the Suez Crisis and Ike being reelected as well. My modest coin collection had not yet advanced to the point of needing those Whitman Coin Books to stuff them into. Checking any change for the supposedly super-rare 1943 copper penny was almost a reflex back then. I was also totally ignorant of the silver in those WW2 nickels! (And never imagined that less than a decade later newly-minted US coinage would be almost totally devoid of silver.) Where there's smokeThe contrast between his shirt and the color of the newspaper is striking; I can definitely see that a different process is used now. That's the evening paper, which would indicate that it's new, and hasn't sat out in the sun to yellow, and yet the color looks like it's been sitting in the driveway for three days. Also I have to admit to being deeply amused by a freshman with a PIPE. Heh. Wonder how long that particular affectation lasted!! Our family artifactsThe turtle: Good eyes! Actually, it's made of sea shells: cowries for the carapace and head and snails for the feet. I actually still have it, as well as a twin of the wishing well. Fish bowl: it served two purposes: to temporarily house goldfish that one of us would win at a festival game booth by throwing a ping-pong ball in their bowl, and to temporarily house tadpoles and polliwogs we'd catch at the Russian River. "Temporarily" because in each case their survival rate was depressingly low. Aluminum tumblers: ours had come with cottage cheese in them originally. Funny, I have that foil-gum-wrapper sensitivity thing too, but I never had a problem with the tumblers. Newsprint: no, the SF News came on uncolored newsprint. The Call-Bulletin, which The News later merged with, had a pink front page, as I recall; and a red masthead, I think. Ginger pots: my mother's shopping expeditions to The City (via Greyhound bus, with me in tow) would generally include Chinatown to get candied ginger and watermelon, so we always had several of those around. Nodding turtle?Could that be a nodding turtle with a half walnut shell carapace, just to the right of the wishing well? Wow! Time CapsuleThis is another example of a photo that people would have barely looked at when it was first developed but is hugely interesting to us 50 years later. It's one of the reasons I find it difficult to delete any photos that I take. What's with the empty fish bowl? Was there a recent death in the family? College funDid your goldfish die or was your brother trying to see how many he could swallow? At SeventeenMy mother made knitted booties to surround the anodized aluminum tumblers. Of course the seam was at the bottom, so the tumblers never sat quite straight. Neither did they prevent the terrible sensation of icy medal clinking on my teeth -- the horror, the horror. I came home for my Thanksgiving break from Cal Poly with a boyfriend; perhaps a pipe would have been better. Our souvenir from Sequoia was a redwood plaque fringed with bark that said, "There's no place like home." Times were so much simpler then -- frilly white curtains and all. Or maybe it was because I was just seventeen. Two thingsTwo things. Is it possible that the paper is on pink newsprint? Pink, light green and yellow were used back in the day along with white. And my mother still has some of her anodized aluminum tumblers, but I find the taste and feel to be like chewing gum wrapper foil (try it, you won't like it). Scrap Aluminum TumblersMy dad worked for Alcoa for years and they offered employees blemished aluminum items that were being reprocessed for scrap priced by weight, 50 cents per pound. Sometime in the 50s he bought about twenty of those tumblers in their unfinished aluminum state. I sold the old home place in 2002 and I think they are still there in the basement. He re-roofed a carport in the early 70s with 4.5' x 12' corrugated aluminum sheeting bought at 50 cents a pound. Ginger potThose green pots that candied ginger came in and that no-one could ever bear to throw out -- they must have sat by the millions on window ledges across America, just like the one here. I haven't seen one lately, though. Does candied ginger come that way any more? Hungarian MonksI go to Mass most Sundays at a local monastery that was founded by Hungarian Cistercians who escaped the Communists. Those that are left of the original group are all in their late '70's or early '80's. Odd to think of them winding up in Texas. I swear my grandma had those exact same drapes in 1952. We had commercial knitty sleeves for the tumblers that fit smoothly around the bottom, so you could set them down. Their iciness made the peculiar water in my mom's old home town at all palatable. Learning to InhaleSmoked a pipe for many years. I needed to learn how to inhale to enjoy that other smokable that became increasingly popular in the '60s. -- Will, the guy in the photo Call-Bulletin's newsprint colorwas actually purple as I recall for the front section wrapper, if that's the correct term. My grade school friend Charles McGowan and I used to joke at the top of our lungs when coming back from Saturday matinees in San Anselmo to Larkspur about it being made my microbes that would eventually consume the readers. Great 1940s smart-aleck 10-year-olds' humor in those days. BTW, the S.F. Chronicle's Sporting Green then was printed on green newsprint.... -- Will in the photo (Paul's brother) Stylish window fashionsMy house was built in 1950, and I'd love to have those frilly dotted swiss curtains for my bedroom and the floral barkcloth drapes for my living room. Dotted Swiss CurtainsGood for Mattie for noticing that. Our mother was always very proud of having "real" dotted Swiss curtains and not just "flocked". Mother would be pleased. She came into a bit of money and had the living and dining room windows "done" by a decorator from a local store. Not seen are the custom made wooden cornices above. What, the curtains?I now know more about the window decor I lived with through my entire childhood than I ever knew before, including the "dotted Swiss" business and that those drapes (which I would kill for) are of "barkcloth." The ChairsHey - We have one or two of those Kitchen Chairs today. Really, and the table they went with! -- Mary and Lane Niece to Will (the guy in the photo) Aluminum tumblersMy Aunt Daisy presented us with a set of those aluminum tumblers one Christmas in the 50s. I think it was six of them, each one a different bright color. They were put away on a high shelf and my mother never used them. She was convinced that aluminum cookware, etc. was a danger to one's health. She never mentioned anything to her sister about the deadly gift. [If Alcoa ever fields a gymnastics team, you know what they should name it? The Aluminum Tumblers. - Dave] Robbed!I feel cheated. Having been born in 1964, I never was myself acquainted with those aluminum tumblers. My era was plastic. Aluminium TumblersI was a child of the 50s and in our family only the little kids used the aluminum tumblers. My mother threw those out, along with the Fiesta pitchers she had. Yow! I have collected aluminum ware for many years and I have dozens of tumblers, as well as many natural aluminum pieces that were hand made in the 30s and 40s. The main problem with the anodized colored aluminum ware is that it scratches easily, especially if the anodizing was not done well. The anodized layer needs a coat of clear lacquer to protect it. Some manufacturers just didn't bother. (ShorpyBlog, Member Gallery, Thanksgiving, tterrapix)
Stings Like a B: 1942
... haven't bee assembled and put on yet, next the yellow color is the primer paint, the finished coat would be olive drab, camouflage or ... (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 05/04/2017 - 2:28pm -

        Time flies like B-25's. Another Kodachrome from the Early Days of Shorpy, enlarged and re-restored. October 1942. "B-25 bomber assembly hall, North American Aviation, Kansas City." Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the OWI. View full size. I never realized how small aI never realized how small a B-25 was. That thing's tiny. Also, where are all the people? Bright yellow!Not exactly a stealth bomber, eh? Where are all the peopleMight be that a security guard on night duty took the picture. Where the people areThey are mostly hidden by the planes. I see at least 19 people. The photographer was Alfred Palmer, who took hundreds of pictures like this for the Office of War Information. BombersNot many of you know about WW II planes, first the rest of the outboard wings haven't bee assembled and put on yet, next the yellow color is the primer paint, the finished coat would be olive drab, camouflage or desert colors light & dark sand depending what theater of war the plane would be sent to. North American AviationThat was not a B25 (a four engine heavy bomber) The plane in the photo appears to be the twin engined B26, a much faster, lighter "attack bomber" for lower level pin-point missions rather than the carpet bombing that actually the larger B-17's and B25's were best suited for. B25 bomberThe B25 was a twin-engine medium bomber. I have some more pictures of the assembly line to post later in the week. B25 bomberGood plane; wasn't it a B-25 that hit the Empire State building late in the war years?? Harry B25 BomberYes, that was a B25. From Wikipedia: At 9:49 a.m. on Saturday July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber flying in a thick fog accidentally crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building between the 79th and 80th floors, where the offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council were located. One engine shot through the side opposite the impact and another plummeted down an elevator shaft. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. Fourteen people were killed. Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a plunge of 75 stories inside an elevator, which still stands as the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall. Despite the damage and loss of life, the building was open for business on many floors on the following Monday. B-25 or B24?You're thinking of the B-24 4 engine "Liberator" bomber which was cousin to the B-17 "Flying Fortress" that did carpet bombing before the advent of the B-29 "Super Fortress". The B-26 was a twin engine light bomber made by Martin Aircraft Co, and in the same category with the B-25 "Mitchell". This is definitely a pictureThis is definitely a picture of a B-25, also known as a Billy Mitchell. I flew as a passenger in one of them in 1948 on my way to an Air Force tech school to become a radio operator. It had to be the noisiest ride ever in a medium bomber, but it was fast. Kodachrome?Was this taken on Kodachrome? Look at how well the colors are retained. - Nick [Yes,a 4x5 Kodachrome transparency. - Dave] This is definitely a B-25This is definitely a B-25 Mitchell, not a B-24 Liberator, and not a B-26 Marauder. I have shot B-25s in the past, so I have personal experience with this plane. This is the same type of plane that Jimmy Doolittle flew off of the deck of the USS Hornet in 1942 to bomb Tokyo during WWII. Above comments very interesting Some knowlegable,some not.I flew this plane (B-25) in the South Pacific. What a beauty it was. It was a medium bomber that was turned into a strafer with 12 50's firing forward, very lethal. We flew tree top missions on land and mast top missions when hitting ships. B-26 and A-26Just to confuse the issue there were A-26s too. Twin engine ship built by Douglas. B-25The plane is a B-25...the b26 has a different tail configuration and the b-24 looks similar but has 4 engines. B-25This is an early model B-25, probably a D model due to the aft location of the upper gun turret and the lack of a tail gunner position. B-25 D'sThose are B-25 d's at the Faifax assembly plant. My dad built em there. He's still kickin and saw the photo. Brought back a lot of memories. He says thanks for the great pic. Nacelle Tips?I spent a lot of years in aviation, working on everything from light aircraft to WWII war birds. I even worked in a factory for a while on Swearingen's final assembly line in San Antonio. Later, I went on to fly professionally ending my career with about about 2700 hours, many of them in various types of WWII vintage aircraft. I was wondering if anybody knows what the red covers are on the ends of the nacelles [below]. I have never seen anything like this before. Nacelle CapsInteresting. The appear to be temporary rather than permanent, held on by bungees attached to the incomplete wing assemblies. Interestingly they are only found on two of the aircraft; the plane nearest to us where the worker is at the tail assembly, and the plane ahead of it to the right. Neither of these aircraft has wheels or propellers. Most of the other aircraft in the assembly area do. Trouble is that the plane to the right of the second plane with the caps doesn't have a cap but also doesn't seem to have either props or wheels. I'm just guessing here but I think my reasoning is good. It seems obvious that these nacelle caps are used to indicate that some step in the assembly process, probably related to the engines or the hydraulics of the landing gear, hasn't been completed and tested yet and so long as the red cap is remains on the nacelle the aircraft can't go further in the assembly process. But as I say this is just a guess. Nacelle capsThese appear to be in place to protect the metal while the wing root and nacelle are lifted into place or while the a/c is being pushed about, at least until the wheels are installed. Perhaps a tow bar is attached to the nose gear strut at that point. Then again, they may be giant hickies. Fairfax B-25 PlantThe Fairfax B-25 plant was NW of the tee intersection of Fairfax Trafficway and what's now Kindleberger Road in Kansas City, KS. The photo is in what was the final assembly high bay near that intersection and facing north. The plant was bought by GM after the war and used for auto production until it closed for good in the mid 80s and then torn down. The old Fairfax Airport next door was bought out about that time, closed and a new GM-Fairfax plant built on the airport site to replace the old auto plant. Here's a nice KSHS pdf history of the B-25 plant: http://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2005winter_macias.pdf The B-25 plant site is now a fenced off, vacant, scrubby field. The only facility remains are the parking lot with what's left of the main entrance drive. You've got a great photo blog. This photo is my new wallpaper, I hope that's okay. Mellow YellowI had no idea that planes would have been painted yellow at this stage! You always see B&W photos so I just assumed they were still just bare metal. B-25 Fairfax plantI'm pretty sure that Fairfax plant was in Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas. I live withing walking distance of the plant and I'm on my side of the state line. Those B-25 bombers were always Bushwhackers, built by the ancestors of Captain Quantrill. The B-25 Bomber ain't no jayhawker. george.todd [The B-25 plant next to the old Fairfax Airport is now part of the General Motors Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas. - Dave] Mickey the B-25My mother-in-law worked at the Fairfax plant installing bombsights in B-25's. She would taxi the aircraft out herself once the bombsight was installed for the ferry pilots to deliver them. She often talked about one that had the name "Mickey" painted on it. I was wondering if anyone knew anything about this aircraft. Any news would be appreciated. Thanks. B-25 Bomber Plant locationJust to clarify, the plant that produced the B-25 bombers in Fairfax was located on the north side of Kindleberger Road, east of Brinkerhoff Road. It was west of the old Fairfax Airport and has since been torn down, however the parking areas from the old plant are still in place. The new GM Fairfax assembly plant was built on the east side of Fairfax Trafficway, right in the middle of the old Fairfax airport. [aerial photo] That yellow paint is a primerIt was a nasty zinc chromate concoction meant to prevent corrosion and also allow the top coat of paint to adhere better. Worn paint revealed the primer underneath in contemporary pictures. Eventually it was realised the average wartime airframe didn't last long enough in service to allow corrosion to begin and the primer was dropped, a cost and weight saving. B-25 plant LocationHere there is an aerial photo showing the plant and airport. The plant was immediately adjacent to the NW corner of the airport. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2)
South Water Street Terminal: 1943
... to buy film of the same batch number to try to insure some color consistancy from box to box of film. Steve Crise Film Thanks ... were big reflex cameras made from the 20s until after WW2. They lost their popularity to more modern equipment and today can be found ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 01/11/2023 - 2:44pm -

April 1943. "Illinois Central R.R. freight cars at the South Water Street freight terminal, Chicago. The C & O and Nickel Plate Railroads lease part of this terminal." 4x5 inch Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. View full size. formatYou asked about the format. It looks like 4x5. It's sheet film -- you can see the sheet film ID notches and and marks from the developing hangers, which are only used on sheet film. It's proportioned like 4x5 or 8x10. It looks like 4x5 because of the sizes of the notches and hanger marks relative to the size of the picture. I think that back in the early days Kodachrome was made in sheet film sizes. I can't read the ID on the edge of the image, but that should tell you. FormatThanks for the info. Along the edge it says "EASTMAN -- SAFETY -- KODAK 62" (they all seem to be KODAK 62 or KODAK 3) and in two places is the number 679. Some of the others also have 679. Others have 678 or 640. The dimensions seem to be about 4.3 by 3.4 inches. FormatIts 4x5 for sure. Thing I'd like to know is if it is indeed Kodachrome. I know 4x5 Kodachrome did exist in the 1950's. However I'm not sure about 1944. I tried looking up code notches on a Kodak web site but they didn't go back that far. I was able to confirm based on the notches that is at least on Safety Film and not a nitrate base. Steve Crise NumbersThe numbers indicate the batch number of a particular run of film. Photographer who shot may images over a short period of time always tried to buy film of the same batch number to try to insure some color consistancy from box to box of film. Steve Crise FilmThanks Steve! Here is one from 1943. I reversed it so the lettering isn't backward: https://www.shorpy.com/images/photos/1a34708u.jpg FormatIf the dimensions are indeed 4.3 by 3.4 inches, then this was most probably taken with a 3¼ X 4¼ Graflex, which was a popular professional camera of the time. Graflexes were big reflex cameras made from the 20s until after WW2. They lost their popularity to more modern equipment and today can be found only on eBay... FormatThe outside (uncropped) dimensions are 4x5. Many of these were taken with Speed Graphic press cameras. SkylineChicago certainly had a more elegant skyline back then, didn't it? (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Chicago, Jack Delano, Railroads)
Kodachrome Goes to War: 1942
... maximus. Hats off to Kodachrome. Such beautiful, limpid color. Kodachrome As a photographer all of my working life, this is a ... images, I thought I'd do the opposite. Face it, WWII and color just don't seem right. I'm kidding.... (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/05/2012 - 1:11pm -

October 1942. "Women are trained as engine mechanics in thorough Douglas training methods. Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California." Skipping ahead to 2009, and the end of an era: Today Kodak announced that, after 74 colorful years, it will stop making Kodachrome film. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer, Office of War Information. View full size. Woot!Saddle shoes! Awesome Kodachrome, so long..Nothing is as sexy as a woman with a wrench in her hand! Farewell, My Lovely!My first job out of college in 1973 was as a Kodachrome Quality Control Chemist at Berkey Photo in New York. It was an incredibly complex process that got incredibly beautiful results. As Mark Twain said of the Mississippi steamboat: "So short a life for so magnificent a creature." Somebody's gotta say it Kodachrome They give us those nice bright colors They give us the greens of summers Makes you think all the world's a sunny day... Momma, don't take my Kodachrome away. Hubba HubbaThat is one gorgeous airplane mechanic. (Yes, wisenheimers, I'm talking about the one on the left.) HyperrealWhat a grand picture; it has sort of a "heightened" look, for lack of a better word. Lovely as Technicolor. (And I'd say the mechanic on the right is pretty cute, too.) She and HeShe's cute. He, on the other hand, is hottimus maximus. Hats off to Kodachrome. Such beautiful, limpid color. KodachromeAs a photographer all of my working life, this is a very sad but not unexpected day. I was too young to be shooting in the era where you could shoot 4x5 Kodachrome. That's one of the things I love about this site. I shot quite a bit of it when it came back briefly to the medium format world in the mid-80s. I've come very close to selling my 4x5 camera given the dearth of emulsions still available but the images on this site keep me in the game, so to speak. Definitely the real dealIf there is any question as to this young lady being just a publicity model or the real-deal mechanic, look closely at her fingernails. The dirty saddle shoes could be a set-up with a model, but no gal I know that only poses as camera candy would have those fingernails! Definitely a real engine assembly worker. What type engineI wondered what engine this was and a quick photo search shows this as a R-1830. Long Beach built C-47 cargo planes and they used this type engine. What's on the clipboard?Nice to see the details on the shipping tag; can someone enlarge the clipboard at center-left, in case there's anything of interest on it? [Alas, it is out of focus. - Dave] Keep your heads down!Those external cylinder head oil pipes look very vulnerable to me. They are critical to the engine's operation yet in use they'd be hiding behind a thin aluminium sheet. Meanwhile the baddies would be firing all sorts of assorted sharp pieces of ironmongery in their direction. "Oil lines"The "oil lines" of concern to the first commenter are actually spark plug leads. Each cylinder has two spark plugs, fired by separate magnetos. I was also taken with the fact that this pretty girl is no mere model. De-colorization.With all the controversy surrounding the use of the computer to colorize black and white images, I thought I'd do the opposite. Face it, WWII and color just don't seem right. I'm kidding.... (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2)
Kodachrome Karnival: 1979
... the photographic materials. In the case of standard four-color printing, such as for books and magazines, the pigments are entirely ... David posted a Kodachrome of a female factory worker in a WW2 aviation plant (I think) and a young man posted a response saying he was ... 
 
Posted by tterrace - 01/08/2011 - 3:41am -

Last week saw the last processing run for Kodachrome film, as noted on Shorpy here. I thought that this one, shot by my friend in 1979, was a good example of what all the hubbub was about. It's at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, California. View full size. Washington Post: Eulogy for KodachromeThere's a great narrative, with an accompanying slide show, in which Washington Post photographer John McDonnell eulogizes Kodachrome, the iconic film produced by Kodak from 1935 to 2009. You'll have to put up with a short commercial intro, but the narrative and slide show are worth the wait! (Make sure your volume is turned on.) Kodachrome scanningFirst of all, there's no such thing as a "straight" translation of any kind of photochemical image to another medium, even if it's another photographic emulsion. In that case, there are differences in the pigments and dyes used in the photographic materials. In the case of standard four-color printing, such as for books and magazines, the pigments are entirely different chemically. Furthermore, there's no way to replicate the contrast range of a color slide viewed by transmitted light on a print viewed by reflected light. When we get into digital scanning and display, there are further complications: the scanning light source, the color sensitivity of the image sensors and even the spectral characteristics of the film itself. (This is a particular problem with Kodachrome, which we faced when I was working in our custom color lab; we could achieve reasonable color accuracy in making duplicate slides and prints from Ektachrome, but doing so across the spectrum with Kodachrome originals was often impossible.) With digital, there's the additional complication of the final display, whose colors are produced in a different manner altogether. And again, the contrast range of a projected color slide exceeds that possible with a standard computer display. The best we can achieve is a reasonable simulation of what's on the slide. Then there's another angle: not all Kodachrome processing was equal. Processing done by Kodak itself was the most consistent, but that from other labs could be all over the map; our own collection of hundreds and hundreds of Kodachrome slides over a span of over three decades provides ample proof of that. We have greenish Kodachromes, magenta-tinged Kodachromes, reddish Kodachromes, bluish Kodachromes, cyanish Kodachromes and others that are off one way in certain colors and another way in others. This particular slide is from a batch processed by some unidentified lab, and they're all consistently reddish/magenta compared to the standard processed-by-Kodak color that I'm thoroughly familiar with. I decided to correct that out to something that looked, to my eyes, more like a Kodak-processed Kodachrome. Below is a version that's close to what the original slide looks like; I can guarantee that the asphalt of the fairgrounds was not red. Not as red as blueExcepting the sky is brite blue, I see this image as heavy with blue, and not as warm red as Kodachrome normally gave. Perhaps it is the age of the image as well. I did a quick adjustment and increased the color overall except contrast. The result is what I thought Kodachrome normally revealed. Just my opinion though. [Put on your sunglasses. - Dave] KodachromeI guess I am spoiled by digital photography. I think the color in this image is average. Also, is this a straight scan without digital manipulation? I enjoy this site. Keep up your good work. Doug Santo Pasadena, CA Sounds like a song titleBeautiful colors, too late though. Someone has already taken my Kodachrome away. I remember fairs like thisThis scene was repeated thousands of times across North America in the mid 70's and early 80's. I could have been one of the three kids standing by the fence. I love the fact that the rides, while brightly painted, aren't cluttered with all sorts of advertising like they seem to be now. I remember riding most of these, the Hurricane, the Yo-Yo and as the sing says, the TipTop. My favorites were The Scrambler, the Loop-O-Plane and the Tilt-A-Whirl. Wagner Shows, a Western Canadian outfit which served our town, used to feature a fellow who rode the deck of the Tilt-A-Whirl while the ride ran, nimbly stepping between the buckets, giving each an extra spin at just the right moment. He wore a t-shirt that read "Tilt the World with Joe". Anyhow, I very much like this photograph. It's one of the few shown here new enough to allow one to suppose that at least some of the people in it aren't obviously dead. Kodachrome realismAll the hubbub (for me, at least) is Kodachrome's ability to make then look and feel like now. A couple of years ago David posted a Kodachrome of a female factory worker in a WW2 aviation plant (I think) and a young man posted a response saying he was convinced beyond all doubt that the photo was a fake. It just did not seem possible to him that a picture from that long ago could look so vivid and immediate. I can see why he might think that because Kodachrome could make 60 years ago look like yesterday. Foy KodachromeIf that's a 35mm transparency, I wish I had spent more time working with Kodachrome than Ektachrome. Amazing detail, colour and texture. Too bad it required a crystal clear day like this to stop motion. Awww, c'mon nowNot at all fair to judge the benefits of Kodachrome by today's digital software manipulation. Back then, you got what you got. And, when it came to printing, only Cibachrome could really capture the essence of the Kodachrome transparency. And yes, even then a wee bit of "manipulation" was possible. We shouldn't compare apples to oranges. Kodachrome vs. DigitalIn 50 years this transparency, barring disaster such as a fire or flood, will look just like this. In 50 years any digital photograph, unless painstakingly re-saved to the latest storage media, will be non-existent. If you print the digital photo to paper with an ink jet printer, it will have long since faded into a mere ghost of its original glory. Re: Kodachrome vs, Digital>> In 50 years any digital photograph, unless painstakingly re-saved to the latest storage media, will be non-existent. This is an oft-repeated canard without much basis in fact. Your average flash memory card should be good for many decades of storage. With billions of them currently in use, there'll be a market for card readers for decades to come, even after the various formats become obsolete. The same is true for hard drives and most other mass-storage media. (Or you can just keep your photos online -- my oldest albums have been online for 15 years now.) For most folks, the storage medium of choice is prints. Inkjet prints made on good paper with dye-based inks have permanence ratings of 100 years or more. WOWWhat an incredibly interesting and fascinating work of art. KodachromeColor just oozes. Re: Kodachrome vs. digitalI used Kodachrome for many happy years, beginning in the ASA 25 years. I was fortunate in living close enough to one of Kodak's own labs, so processing was always consistent. I don't think K-chrome's prime asset was realism as much as it was beauty. Rich colors - in my experience, more so than digital -- set it apart. Ektachrome was the "bluish" film; Kodachrome brought out the deep warm tones. Ultimately, I switched to Fuji film because later high-speed versions of K-chrome weren't as satisfying as the ASA 25 variety. If K-25 was still available, I'd be using it today, and my digital equipment would be gathering dust. Projection - Yes!Too bad such a wonderful film is gone. Tterrace nails the problem with duplicating, digitizing or printing any transparency right on the head. The only thing I havn't experienced is the variance from other labs. Here in the midwest the labs were quite spread out. I processed Kodachrome in Minneapolis and the closest two labs were in Chicago and Kansas City. All the labs were licensed by Kodak and had to adhere to a certain quality standard to maintain their license. I remember that the chemical department had analysis equipment that wouldn't be found in any other photo lab and I had to calibrate the cyan and yellow printing lamps before every run. Just an interesting sidenote, EPA compliance and monitoring was always a problem because the cyan developer had a high level of cyanide that went down the drain from the tank overflow. What's gone is gone.I make no apologies for the fact that the passing of Kodakchrome 35mm slide film does not bring a tear to my eye or a lump to the throat. I'm 65 years old and have used my share of slide and print film over the past 40 to 50 years, including Agfa, Fuji and Kodak products. I have boxes of Kodak Carousel containers filled with slides, and smaller plastic boxes as received from the processing labs filled with slides. Many, many of them show signs of deterioration, no doubt due to careless storage. I'm what anyone would call a rank amateur, a "snapshot-shooter," and although I still have my Nikons I have not used them since 2001, preferring instead the ease and economy that several digital cameras give me. No, not for me the crocodile tears as I wave goodbye to Kodachrome. I'll gladly store my photographs on USB memory sticks or DVDs, keeping only the best of a mediocre bunch and only paying for prints of the really special ones. And I doubt that any other "snapshooter" would feel any different. We will miss you Gives us the nice bright colors, the greens of summer, makes all the world a summer's day. (Sorry Paul, best I can remember at my age). (ShorpyBlog, Member Gallery, tterrapix)
Sidewalk Squadron: 1942
... bike, but it is certainly the de rigueur 1940s "girly" color model. Remember the days when your bike handles fell off and you ... tires. Neat photo today that had me diving into bikes in WW2. Is that a rock? Why hang a rock from your handlebars? And if it's ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 01/19/2023 - 9:26pm -

July 1942. "Detroit, Michigan. Boys and a girl on bicycles." 4x5 inch acetate negative by Arthur Siegel for the Farm Security Administration. View full size. Thanks for that caption, FSA!Without it, I would never have realized I was looking at boys and a girl on bicycles. [The captions are a finding aid for researchers who may not have access to the negatives they describe, or to avoid having to take the negative out of its sleeve, and also because it can be hard to figure out what you're looking at in a negative image. - Dave] Omira Avenue??Brick house on the right a spitting image for my grandmother's house. Same pipe fence around the pride-and-joy 6-foot lawn. AhoogaI had (actually still have) one of those horns on my bicycle which I got around 1948. No batteries required and really LOUD. Captions MatterIn regards to GlenJay's comment: having slogged through 12 linear feet of uncataloged negatives and prints in a local museum, I can verify that even a bare bones caption dramatically reduces a researcher's workload. Bike BreedsTwo Cleveland Welding Company (CWC) "Roadmaster" bikes (one slightly older) ca. 1937-1941. From the Vintage American Bicycles website, "CWC started producing bikes in September of 1935." The third boy's bike appears to be badged Winton, though that company stopped making bicycles before 1900; but hundreds of badges were placed on various makers' models. Cannot ID the girl's bike, but it is certainly the de rigueur 1940s "girly" color model. Remember the days when your bike handles fell off and you were left with cold steel? Bell Bottom BluesSailor, Tuck in those pant legs, or else a member of the Sidewalk Squadron is going to make unwanted contact with it! Child retirees ??We hear so much about restrictions on automobile tires during the war, but what about bike tires ? Were they similarly rationed, or was it just too minor an issue to bother with? (that would be hard to believe: it's seems like nothing was "too minor to bother with" during WWII.) Waiting for someone to identify the models: I thought one was a Schwinn, but the spelling is wrong (unless they omitted one of the "N"'s as a wartime economy measure!) [Roadmaster, Winton, ???, Roadmaster. - Dave] Rubber shortageGlancing at the front bike tires made me think of rubber rationing and if bike tires were rationed. Of course. Immediately after Pearl Harbor ALL rubber was rationed/banned for most civilian use from tires to hot water bottles to rubber shoe soles. I had never heard of these but there were Victory Bicycles built during the war to aid with transportation. Less metal by weight, elimination of the frills, small amounts of strategic metals, narrower size tires. Neat photo today that had me diving into bikes in WW2. Is that a rock?Why hang a rock from your handlebars? And if it's something else -- what is it? [The girl has one, too! - Dave] Not an onion, but ...with apologies to Abe Simpson, "So I tied a rock to my handlebars, which was the style at the time!" My mom (b 1942) told me that in Des Moines in the '50s it was popular for girls to tie a thread around the neck of a dime store chameleon and pin the other end to your blouse so the little lizard could walk around on your shoulders. Crackerjack outfitThe guy on the left has a sailor hat and bellbottoms. Was there a high school Naval ROTC equivalent at the time? (The Gallery, Arthur Siegel, Bicycles, Detroit Photos, Kids)
Woo Woo: 1942
... 34 million American men registered for military service in WW2, only around 10 million ended up being inducted. - Dave] Very Well ... have known it was colorized. it looks like a vintage color photo to me. Well done. Boy, he looks tired, and she obviously is. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 02/21/2023 - 12:53pm -

September 1942. "Boy and girl from Richwood, West Virginia, en route to upper New York state to work in the harvest." The young man last seen here. And here. Acetate negative (colorized by Shorpy) by John Collier for the Farm Security Administration. View full size. Guessing gameWhy did you feel the need to "colorize" it? [It wasn't a need, it was a want. It pleases me to do so. - Dave] Train of ThoughtEach time i see this young man I wonder why, in 1942, he's not on a troop train somewhere in the US or England instead of working a harvest. [He's a high school student, and the draft age when this photo was taken was 21. Out of the 34 million American men registered for military service in WW2, only around 10 million ended up being inducted. - Dave] Very Well DoneDave ... one of the best I have seen ... you expertly captured the look of aging Kodachrome. [The credit goes to Photoshop's "neural filters." - Dave] Nice Job DaveGood skin tone as well. Adds dynamic to the whole scene. Well done mate! Didn't KnowI wouldn't have known it was colorized. it looks like a vintage color photo to me. Well done. Boy, he looks tired, and she obviously is. (The Gallery, Agriculture, John Collier, Railroads)
Class Report: 1940
... shoes. What was fashion then now serves me well as a WW2 Living Historian. They have become a trademark of sorts and everyone asks, ... every day? Saddle colors Does anyone know about the color of the saddle part of the saddle shoe and whether what was "in" varied ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/13/2012 - 6:07pm -

Art class circa 1940. "Montgomery High School students, Maryland." Our third or fourth photo from Montgomery High. Anyone have an old yearbook from there? National Photo Company Collection safety negative. View full size. Saddle Shoes and TwinsOne can see clearly that "still waters run deep" just by looking into the faces of these proufoundly serious kids. The identical twins in the corner look a lot like the girl in the dark dress on the left of them, I'd bet it is a sister. Wonder if any of these obedient teens ever became famous artists. Thank you for this photo from someone who wanted to be an artist but did not have the required talent. What's up with saddle shoes?Not to obsess....well maybe just a bit...but whatever happened with saddle shoes? More than half of the girls are wearing them in this picture. Sure must have made dressing easy 'hmmm what shoes with this? Oh! I know how about my saddle shoes?' When did they become so popular? When did they lose their cachet? Is it time for a revival? Yes, what IS up with saddle shoes?Saddle shoes maintained some popularity throughout, at least, my childhood in the early 80's. I remember begging my mom for a pair from Stride Rite every time we went to the mall - but their being a high quality shoe made from leather, we could never afford it. I finally bought my saddle shoes around 1998. The "swing revival" made everything old new again. They were Arizona brand from (I think) Sears. At $65, they were the most expensive pair of shoes I had at the time and I had to save up for them. By now I've bought so many shoes that my mother now jokes and calls me "Miss Marcos" - but no pair means as much to me as those saddle shoes. What was fashion then now serves me well as a WW2 Living Historian. They have become a trademark of sorts and everyone asks, "Where did you get those great shoes?!" Saddle Shoes n Bobby SoxPretty much the standard bobby-soxer footwear all through the 1940s and into the 50s. ("Frankie!!") All they need are the sox. 2 plus 2Maybe there are two sets of twins. Re: Saddle ColorsFrom what I've seen in trying to find my "perfect" pair, brown was one of the most popular colours. The ones in this photo look to be brown and cream. Blue and cream was most popular for men in the 40s and 50s. It seems that the black on white became the standard in the late 50s with the other colours falling by the wayside. Of course, these combos weren't the only ones available. I've found a lovely pair of tan suede with brown saddle and recently saw that a shoemaker has black with hot pink saddles available! Heart of DorknessSaddle shoes were still somewhat popular but well on their way out when I was in high school in the mid-1960s in San Diego. Locally nicknamed "squad cars," they were too much the fashion choice of our older sisters and mothers to hold much appeal for the more progressive girls in my school. Girls who wore squad cars and boys who wore dark socks with shorts and tennis shoes were looked upon as hopelessly dorky by Those in the Know. Are today's kids as merciless? Probably, about other such stuff. TwinsThe twins are dressed alike! I wonder if they did that for the photo or if they actually dressed alike every day? Saddle colorsDoes anyone know about the color of the saddle part of the saddle shoe and whether what was "in" varied from place to place or over time? I recall in the '50s, at least where I was in 6th grade in New Jersey, it had to be brown, though the shoes also came with black and even blue saddles, both of which were very uncool. Polishing the things was a chore -- that white liquid polish always seemed to slurp over onto the colored part. Second from LeftThe girl second from the left in the back row is lovely, in spite of her having been caught with a funny expression. I want to go back in time now. Love them saddles!I wore saddle shoes in high school in the late '70s. They were tan with dark blue saddles, and I loved them. I don't know if they were fashionable, but they were comfortable and versatile - they worked with skirts or pants. I bet none of these gals ever twisted an ankle in their sensible saddle shoes. Saddle Shoe SmorgyAnother handsome color combination that was popular on the West Coast was "oxblood" (a deep reddish brown) and cream, which the snottier kids in my high school called "Liver and Lard." SaddledI'm glad to see I wasn't the only kid pleading for black-and-white saddle shoes in the '80s (also to eventually get them and outgrow them all too soon). My mom, however, hated them, saying how ugly they were and that she had been forced to wear them as a child when she desperately wanted pretty girly things and couldn't understand why I wouldn't just wear a nice "modern" pair of tennis shoes. Shoo-Shoo BabyOh, how I begged for saddle shoes as a kid in the '80's! I did eventually get them, but outgrew them after only a few months. They were the only "good" shoes I had as a kid, for that very reason. I think I must have hit a soft spot with Mom, because she had wanted them so badly as a girl in the '50's, but had to make do with her brother's hand-me-downs. I imagine that there weren't as many choices out there for these middle-class kids during the war years. Unless you lived in a big city, there wouldn't have been as many shoe stores in town, and they would have had limited stock. I feel a musical coming on......the shoes, the postures, the ready positions. Any second now they're gonna jump up onto the table and start doing backflips off. Swing baby, swing. Think "Singing In The Rain" mixed up with "The Music Man." Or something. Saddle Shoes: A MemoirWhen I was growing up in the late forties in Southern Calif. the only color combination was brown and white, both girls and boys. The next popular shoe color for girls was all-white saddles, while the boys went to a cap-toe cordovan oxford and high-top tennis shoes (like Converse). Then came the overwhelmingly popular white buck saddle. The brown-and-white combination gave way to blue-and-white saddles in the early fifties, both for boys and girls, but many of the girls stayed with the white bucks as well. I believe black and white saddle became the "default" color scheme in the early sixties, but by then they were only worn by cheer squads (boys and girls) and parochial schoolgirls; the "mod" look (e.g., go-go boots and "dressy flats worn with stockings) was in by then. Of course, there were notable exceptions, Black-and-white "slingback saddles" were worn by a few girls throughout the entire period, and "Keds" sneakers, in white and various colors, worn with rolled down socks in white or matching colors in the 50's, but by the 60's sneakers with socks were only to be seen in gym class! In the early-to-mid seventies, saddle shoes were mostly brown over tan suede, and were mostly worn by girls (again with some exceptions). I recall a brief resurgence in popularity of saddle shoes in the late seventies and early eighties, in the "preppy" and "valley girl" era, in black-and-white, as well as several other color schemes. My daughter, who was a high school cheerleader in her junior year year wore a pair of black-and-white ones, but only with her uniform. I'm sure there are many others who recall all this entirely differently, but that's what my feeble memory conjures up after all these years. (And thanks for the sweet memories!) Saddles are backI think saddlebacks are coming back into fashion. I just bought a pair of all white Church's & I'm in foot heaven. They are just the most fab shoes ever & they go with everything. By no means am I a preppy dressier- think cocoon shapes, Marni style & you've an accurate picture of my look. Yet these new saddlebacks ground me, if you know what I mean, stopping me from going overboard in fashion looks. Whatever will become of my feet after Labor Day?? (The Gallery, Education, Schools, Natl Photo)
We Met at Work: 1942
... thousands of young men engaged in factory work during WW2 who were deferred from military draft because they were doing essential war ... are all black and white and only the newer pictures are in color. His put-upon father, acting as my own father did on occasion, explained ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 03/19/2016 - 10:02am -

October 1942. "Riveting team working on the cockpit shell of a C-47 transport at Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, Calif. The versatile C-47 performs many important tasks for the Army. It ferries men and cargo across the oceans and mountains, tows gliders and brings paratroopers and their equipment to scenes of action." View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information. Happy Valentine's Day from Shorpy! The planeThe plane in question is the cockpit windscreen of a C-47 transport, the plane that dropped paratroopers into Normandy in advance of D-Day. [Indeed it is. A second photo of the riveter (see above) correctly identifies the plane. I fixed the caption, thanks. - Dave] This picture is fake.Erm ... you might want to point out that this photo is a) not vintage b) staged c) very much modern d) not any of the things you say it is. For example, the film is wrong. She's wearing purple socks. That dude would be IN THE WAR. Her rivet gun isn't attached to anything, and is the wrong make and model, not to mention about twenty years beyond the correct kind. That's not the cockpit of a B-25. her shoes are wrong. his pants are wrong. that's not how airplanes are made. Come on. Seriously. It's a decent picture, but to claim that this is 'vintage' is utter bullshit. ------------------------------------------------------------ [A not unusual comment from people who are a) new to the site b) ignorant of the history of photography c) possibly ignorant in general. (There is a (d) but this is after all a family newspaper.) Alfred Palmer's large-format Kodachromes for the Office of War Information weren't "staged," they were posed, as studies for recruitment posters, exhibits, etc. It is one of many hundreds in the Library of Congress FSA/OWI archive. As for the riveter on the right, there were of course thousands of young men engaged in factory work during WW2 who were deferred from military draft because they were doing essential war work. And the woman's rivet gun is indeed attached (see below). As for the the plane not being a B-25, the commenter was right about that. It's a C-47. - Dave] InterestingI've always been amused to see that the ladies in most of these pictures have quite obviously reapplied their lipstick for the camera. This one did not - and it sort of makes me wonder and giggle a little. Did she not want to be seen doing so in front of her male colleague? Wannabe photo expertThat's Kodachrome for you. A youngster that thinks he knows everything simply cannot accept film reproduction this accurate, that long ago. Clearly this person has just stumbled upon a site he knows nothing about. Also, his accusations are ludicrous given what David Hall does for a living "off-line," where personal credibility must exist before anything said or written can be believed. Very funny post, that. Foy Blackmon Interesting ReasoningAs a mere dabbler in the study of history, I was previously unaware that: - Purple socks had either not yet been invented, or were banned from civilian use for some obscure wartime purpose - The war resulted in the complete absence of all males from the industrial workforce. Thank you, anonymous scholar, for your insights! Those kids think they are smarter than us...>>That dude would be IN THE WAR. That dude might had flat feet or tunnel vision. There were several men classified unfit for the duty, they didn't go home and cry about it. They went to contribute the war effort by working in the factories. Amusing AssumptionHa! That assumption made a few posts ago is actually pretty funny. It reminded me of a Calvin & Hobbes comic from several year ago in which Calvin is looking at some old family photographs. He asks his father why the old photos are all black and white and only the newer pictures are in color. His put-upon father, acting as my own father did on occasion, explained to him that back then, color hadn't been invented yet. Not just color film, but actual color. Sky, grass, hair, skin and clothing only existed in various shades of gray so that's how it showed up in old photos, movies and TV shows. I'm sure Calvin's mom eventually straightened them both out. As incredible as digital photography is, it's not really as big an improvement as it's been made out to be. Mainly it's just faster, and that's all that seems to matter much anymore. Working with film had a learning curve, you had to study what you were doing and over time you developed a skill that you didn't previously possess. Well geez...who's got time to screw with that anymore. You can just take a shotgun approach to photography now and if things still don't look right you can pump it up with editing software. So when a beautifully lit, sharply focused, highly detailed, well composed, color saturated photo is seen now some people are going to assume that it had to have been taken recently and digitally manipulated. Because it looks so much better than the pictures they're taking with their cell phones. Look at a zoomed in crop of the woman's ear in this picture. You can tell that the back lighting is actually passing through her ear. Her ear isn't just reflecting light, it's glowing. Many modern cameras are capable of recording this kind of subtlety and detail as well, but this photo says so much more about the photographer than the type of camera or film he used. That's not to say that these guys didn't have their own bag of tricks for developing and printing their photos that made them even more eye catching, but they didn't tend to be pasted together from the best parts of two or three individual shots. One of the joys..of coming to this site, beyond the fantastic pictures, are the intelligent comments that often reveal even more about the subject. It is just as enjoyable to see comments that do exactly the opposite, and the ease with which the audience can put them in their place. Beautiful picture, BTW. My great aunt was a "Rosie" and I have a whole photo album of her and her 'girlfriends' whooping it up in their off-time in exotic Wichita, KS (well, exotic when you've come from Sapulpa, OK, I guess). Re: Not how airplanes are made.Yes it was, and still is. Look up "bucking bar". You'd be surprised how hand-built even the most complex airliners are. Mom Bucked RivetsMy mother got her start at Boeing in the 1960's bucking rivets just as depicted in the photo. Only it was her holding the bucking bar, and the guy held the riveter. This picture is a fake?Blame it on digital photography. Kids today are so used to digital photography, they have no idea as to the quality of film. As a professional photographer, digital doesn't come close. Most people today only use digital because it's faster, cheaper and uses less light. Digital is based on the amount and quality of the mega pixels, the size of the sensor and the size/quality of the lens. Film has many more variants; in the film alone the size, grain, speed all make a difference. Not to mention the camera, lens, etc. And the other submitter's right about the light and the ear, there's a big difference in the way film and digital captures light. Lastly, bobby sox were popular in many different colors (including purple) during the war, my mom had a drawer full. Pomposity deflatedThis series of posts perfectly displays one way the site is so edifying and entertaining. Dave posted a beautiful, educational photograph, made an educated guess at the background and then graciously accepted a correction to a detail. He and others, in scholarly, civil fashion then made mincemeat out of a pompous nincompoop. Made. My. Day. [As for me making a guess at the background, I just copied the LOC caption info. Which turned out to be wrong about what kind of plane this is. - Dave] How planes are made Yes this is how it is done still. It might surprise anyone who does not work in manufacturing how labor intensive building airplanes or most anything still is. Yes we have come a long way but there is no substitute for the human touch. KodachromeI realize I am 8 years late to the party here, but one big thing in favor of a "historic" interpretation of this photo is how the reds just "pop" at you. You'll see it in any National Geographic from the early 1960s or before--back into the 1940s--or any color film of that period as well. I bet there's a digital camera filter to get that effect, too (boy that would be fun), but it's a nice little "tell". (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2)
Mike Hunter: 1942
... Modern History Of course it helps that it's in color, but pics like this from the '40s always strike me as though, other than ... (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/17/2012 - 10:24pm -

October 1942. "Lieutenant 'Mike' Hunter, Army test pilot assigned to Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information. View full size. A-24ishThe airscoop is wrong for a Dauntless, plus this plane is in Army Air Force paint. Perhaps the AAF variant, A-24 I believe, had a different engine cowling His story.Whatever became of him? Did he make it through the war? PrototypeAnother dead ringer for Steve Canyon! SBDA Douglas SBD Dauntless, I think. They recently raised one from Lake Michigan. Steely eyed missile manI have the feeling that he had no problem gettin' the ladies. More MikePosted earlier here. Yeah, A-24 now that you mentionAhhh, I did not notice the olive paint. I think the scoop is OK, though, I found pictures of SBDs with and without. Here's one with. Aircraft IDMost likely the aircraft is A-20B Havoc 41- 3440 produced by Douglas at its Long Beach facility between December 1941 and January 1943. The give-away, beside the partial serial number in the added photo, is the little window just above the pilot's shoulder. This odd shape was typical of the A-20. It is definitely not an A-24/SBD—a single-engine tail dragger. Both photos indicate this acft is sitting on tricycle gear. It's a Douglas A-20 It was a twin engined light bomber with a tricycle (i.e. nosewheel) undercarriage, pretty advanced for the time. A really smooth aeroplane that did its job. It was also a major success for Douglas. The A-20 was used right through to VJ Day by the USAAF. The RAF had them too and the USSR received a lot. A-20Was the A-20B the only Havoc with the scoop right on the leading edge of the cowling? I can't find any other A-20 pictures where the cowling has a scoop. They all seems to have scoops on the top of the wing, behind the cowling. [The engine with the scoop on top is a Wright Cyclone. - Dave] A-20, I stand correctedIt took awhile, but I found a photo matching that air intake. Very few A-20 pix I found showed an intake like that. And here's one showing the little window and red "Fire Extingusher" label. Modern HistoryOf course it helps that it's in color, but pics like this from the '40s always strike me as though, other than technical anachronisms, they could have been made today -- "modern" in the sense of the subject of the pic could step right out of the frame and fit right in. Compare him to the guys in Company "D" below. Some of 'em look as foreign as headhunters in Guinea!! I suppose it could also be a function of familiarity with the medium. By '42 most Americans would know what the heck to do when somebody pointed a camera at you -- but look at Company D!! Some of them seem pretty natural, but most of them look like their granny just walked in on them taking a bath. And, time seems like it's flown, but there are plenty of people around (and commenting here) who were around in '42. Maybe we're just distracted by the minutia (cell phones, the internet, etc.) and the essentially "modern" attitude was put on long ago, before our parents were born, or before. F.W. HunterYes, the aircraft is an A-20B. I can't believe no one has pointed out the obvious kinship between Lieutenant Hunter and Stephen Colbert. They even pose the same. Other Palmer photos of this fellow identify him as "F.W. Hunter". The leather nametag on his flight suit also says "F.W. Hunter". By taking the name "Mike" instead, what awful name his mother gave him was he running from? Fillmore? Francis? About that scoopThe extended carb intake was intended to hold dust filters for use in the desert. The A-20B was an early USAAF model and the filters don't seem to have been fitted much after that though I believe the late versions (A-20G and J) had the filters fitted further aft. The RAF had a large number of A-20 variations and I have seen pictures of Boston III aircraft fitted with the long scoop. What a guy"I have the feeling that he had no problem gettin' the ladies." Haha. But there's something about the glasses and the headphones and his generally weedy physique that makes him look a bit geeky. I second the man above - whatever happened to him? How did he feel about being a test pilot and not in front line combat? By the numbersIf it is 41-3440 (and it sure looks to be), that was one of the Douglas A-20B Havocs in the 41-2671 through 41-3669 build group. Note this portside prop was installed 10/14/42. The absolutely pristine condition of the cowling, prop and engine indicate this baby hasn't even been flown yet. I have one of those T-30 throat mics and it is incredibly well made. In WW II movies when the frantic pilot put his hand to his throat and yelled "I'm going in!", this is what he wore. Of course, some were Steve Canyon-cool when they were crashing. Not Mike Hunter-cool, perhaps, but cool enough. Bomber PilotThe aircraft is a B-25B. Mike was a post production test pilot meaning he tested the aircraft prior to acceptance and ferry to an operational command. In 1942 in Long Beach he had a job far removed from the USAAF 8th Air Force. [The plane he's shown with below is an A-20 light bomber. - Dave] (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Aviation, WW2)
Union Station: 1943
... I am going to print out this photo on a high resolution color printer and try to figure out where the camera was positioned in the ... . (The Gallery, Chicago, Jack Delano, Railroads, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/17/2012 - 10:09pm -

January 1943. The waiting room of Union Station in Chicago. View full size. Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. Lovely!Wow! Now *that* is a gorgeous picture! LightPhotography is about light and this photograph proves it. How on earth did Jack Delano get the exposure so right? I don't think professional photographers indulged in bracketing in the 1940s, not with expensive sheet film anyway. A truly great photograph. But then again, Delano is my favorite on these pages. [Jack took dozens of shots in this room. - Dave] The eye would see more"If I was standing in that room would it appear similar to the photo? Or is it being helped along with some clever camera work?" I suppose if you were there the beams would appear not quite so bright and the darks would present more detail since the eye can work over a wider range of illumination than film can. But the effect would be similar. Enough to make the photographer think "hey, that would make a great picture." AmazingHelp me out, I'm not a photographer, but not too slow to comprehend the process. If I was standing in that room would it appear similar to the photo? Or is it being helped along with some clever camera work? ThanksThanks, that was the exact sort of response i was looking for. WowWow!!! Now that's a great picture! Union StationGreat picture. Amazing light... Union StationThe blur of the man's foot suggest a fairly long exposure. not THAT long, though, since no one else is blurred. 1/15? 1/8? This is a situation where you use a whole roll of film and get exactly one "perfect" exposure. I wish I knew the aperture and film speed. [There was no roll here. This is sheet film. - Dave] Are my eyes playing tricks?!I have just found this website, actually I was directed here by one of my U.S. friends. This image has stopped me in my tracks, truly an artistic and wonderful image! Exposure timeI'm no expert so this may be wrong, but I see it this way--- as you lengthen the exposure time, the beams get brighter, and the dark parts become more visible, but the spots of direct sunlight stay the same because they are already fully exposed in a short time, so they can't get any whiter. Union StationI walk through this room every day. I am going to print out this photo on a high resolution color printer and try to figure out where the camera was positioned in the room. The room is oriented north to south, and the entrance in the photo is either the north or south side. The room as been remodeled extensively, but I would think the camera is pointed south, due to the light rays coming in. Since the sun is in the southern sky, you would not expect to see light rays coming in from the north. Given that the photo was taken in January, it should be possible to determine what the light conditions were for the photo. By the way, this room is at the bottom of the stairs made famous in the baby carriage scene from the Kevin Costner / Sean Connery movie "The Untouchables". If my guess about where the camera is set is correct, the stairs are behind the photographer. Union StationSince I posted my original comment, I have spent a few minutes in the main waiting room at different times each afternoon. I haven't seen the rays coming through, but I think the difference between Jan 1943 and Jan 2008 is level of light in the room. In 1943, energy conservation measures were in place, so only a handful of dim electric lights were on. In 1992, Union Station was remodeled, and the massive glass roof of the room was cleaned. I recalled reading at the time that the roof had been covered with paint or tar very early in the Stations history, and that the buildings management didnt realize that the massive vaulted ceiling was actually made of glass. That seems a bit unbelivable to me, and I can't find confirmation of that on the web. Today the room is used extensively for Corporate Events. The benches, which appear to be identical to the ones in the 1943 photo, are moved with forklifts. A large center information kiosk in the middle of the room is hidden under a wood panelled cover. The Wikipedia entry has a nice daylight shot of the room. You can clearly see how bright the room is now. You can also see the benches and the end of the room as shown in the 1943 photo. Magnificent photoIt looks like the photographer used a simple rule regarding black and white film that is still taught today--expose for the shadows. By doing that Mr. Delano captured the details you see: the people and background while the sunbeams blaze through the windows like spotlights. If he had exposed for the highlights, i.e. the windows, there would be no sunbeams, the shadows would likely be dark and this would have been a dull image. Rays of LightWe have forgotten how many people smoked at the time. As a kid in Philly's 30th Street station and later as a young adult in Chicago's Union Station, I have seen these rays at both depots at certain times of day. I've tried to re-create them on my 8x10 view camera at both stations. You can't. No one smokes inside so the air is not to be seen. Atmosphere (Literally)Good point, Large Format. I once worked for a BBC film producer who used a smoke machine and a water vapor mist machine to create "atmosphere" for interior set shots. Goober Pea Sunbeams?I'm a bit puzzled by this photo – wouldn't sunbeams project as straight, parallel lines? These seem to spread, thus the source of light must be very close. [Which might mean they're not sunbeams. - Dave] Re: Sunbeams?I believe this is simply sunlight: the apparent divergence of the rays of light is a common optical phenomenon known as crepuscular rays or "God's Rays." Beautiful...!Reminds me of John Collier's excellent grasp of a Norman-Rockwellish scene in Grand Central Terminal — a photo from 1941 also to be found here at Shorpy. (The Gallery, Chicago, Jack Delano, Railroads, WW2)
Nacelle Belles: 1942
... 40's style and these pictures are a tremendous resource in color! Not that far from Anaheim The brooch that woman is wearing makes ... This picture really captures a day on the homefront in WW2. How staged were these? I know that the majority of these women were ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/17/2012 - 10:28pm -

October 1942. "Two assembly line workers at the Long Beach, California, plant of Douglas Aircraft Company enjoy a well-earned lunch period. Nacelle parts of a heavy bomber form the background." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information. View full size. Love the 40's Working WomenThese women are amazing - maintaining their glamour while working and supporting the war effort. Really fantastic. Thanks for this Shorpy - I dress 40's style and these pictures are a tremendous resource in color! Not that far from AnaheimThe brooch that woman is wearing makes her look like an usherette at Disney's Enchanted Tiki room. In ShorpylandIn Shorpyland, everyone is fit and attractive. I WANT TO LIVE THERE! Out of Time?No matter how many times I look at these Kodachrome photographs I never get tired of them, I always find myself transported back in time to the 1940s, just seeing how colourful the young girls dress up even for just going to work in an aircraft factory is a stark contrast to the black and white movies of the day. I've always had a feeling for the US during this period even today I love watching "On the Town" (sad I know) with Gene Kelly just to see some of the colour footage of New York in the 40s. No. 531is oh so cute. Sigh. Palmer PicksIn addition to being an excellent photographer, Alfred Palmer sure knew how to pick his subjects. Hubba-hubba. DeliciousOoh, look at those lunchboxes!! The one I had growing up was NEVER this cool. Les BellesOnce again the OWI photographers chose attractive women to include in their pictures. I guess they were trying to boost wartime morale and have a little fun themselves. Beats photographing the machinery. Those awful shoesLook at the pitiful shoes they're wearing. My mother was a 23-year-old bookkeeper then, and she remembers the sacrifices that were gladly made for the war effort. She says that because so many materials were scarce, the only shoes she could buy were made from substandard material, and quickly fell apart. Also, silk and nylon were unavailable, so the only stockings she could get were rayon, which were horrible. Beautiful girls, walk a little slower.......when you walk by me,..." I can hear Tony Bennett now with that appropriate song for this alluring photo. The one sitting down has a pencil tucked behind her right ear. Years ago anyone having to do paperwork often stored their always-needed pencil behind their ear, don't see that much anymore. Last but not least, my father who was born in 1909 enjoyed wearing red socks which made him a little different and quirky, even in the olden days. He was a fun guy (not the mushroom kind), very intelligent and sociable. This picture really captures a day on the homefront in WW2. How staged were these?I know that the majority of these women were actual workers, but how many were just models that they brought in for these photo shoots? [These photos are not "staged," they're posed. Using actual employees. - Dave] Who could forget those red socks?We've seen the lady on the right previously: https://www.shorpy.com/node/2592 Maybe she started the fashion? https://www.shorpy.com/node/2595 EchoI echo Joe on this one.I might add as a nurse I see fewer and fewer of these fine people. Nacelle Belles: 1942As a man who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, there is an almost overwhelming nostalgia that I feel when I look at these idealized photos of young women from that period. No doubt, many men my age might be longing for the days when women were much more unequal, usually stayed at home, and slaved over the stove to cook memorable meals for their families. But I don't think that is what attracts me to these photos of women who are fashionable, yet ordinary, not glamorous. These women remind me of my mother. Most people who grew up in this era have lost their parents by now, and the missing of one's mother never ends. My mother and father were both modest people, especially my mother, and I don't think modesty is as common now, nor is it as valued - not by a long shot. The magic of KodachromeThe vibrant colours, the tone, texture and the almost 3D quality which Palmer achieves in this photograph are truly stunning. There is a piece of software in existence which digital photographers use to try to replicate the Kodachrome effect; all it does is increase the saturation, it cannot come close to the magic of the real thing. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Alfred Palmer, Pretty Girls, WW2)
P-51 Mustang: 1942
... top nose scoop. Flying History This is an awesome color photograph of an early P-51 Mustang Fighter plane. It's also neat that ... of all sorts. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Aviation, WW2) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 06/29/2022 - 12:14pm -

October 1942. "North American's P-51 'Mustang' fighter is in service with Britain's Royal Air Force. North American Aviation Inc., Inglewood, California." 4x5 inch Kodachrome transparency by Mark Sherwood for the Office of War Information. View full size. Meredith EffectThe distinctive profile of a P-51 includes the radiator inlet near belly center. Early WWII fighter designs were prone to overheating plus cooling drag limited efficiency and speed. British engineer F.W. Meredith recognized that an airplane flying at over 300 MPH could reduce the problem by directing waste exhaust heat through a nozzle to generate thrust exceeding the cooling drag. There are several good articles on the Meredith Effect. P-51's distinctive air inlet needed to be set slightly apart from the fuselage to optimize air flow dynamics. Mustangs were roughly 20 mph faster than Spitfires with the same engine. A Mustang Mk IMaybe made of some of that scrap steel we saw a few photos back. Early P-51 ??I'm not an expert, but when I first looked at this I thought it can't be a P-51 because it doesn't have a bubble canopy. But I gather that the early models were very different from the ones I'm more familiar with. Skye-pilotOf course for RAF service, all the controls would be the reverse of normal. (wink, wink) Early ModelThat's a P-51A or B. It has the razorback canopy which kept drag low (and looked racy) but limited a pilot's rearward visibility. A bit of combat experience resulted in its replacement with the bubble canopy seen on all but a few surviving Mustangs. These later D and E models were a tad slower, but the power of their Rolls Royce Merlin engines was superior to that of the A and B models' Allison. The pre-war red center dot in the national insignia, which had been iconic on American aircraft since 1919, was retired shortly after America entered WWII. It attracted the attention of trigger-happy gunners who thought they saw the rising sun of Japan. By the spring of 1942 most dots had been overpainted white. A, B or CThis P-51 Mustang is either an A, B or C version. While they served until the end of the war, their shortcomings were rearward visibility and gun jamming. The D version (pictured) with the bubble canopy would come out in late 1943 and would prove to be our best fighter of the war. Lend-LeaseThat is about as fabulous an airplane as you’ll ever see. Maverick flew the later model with the bubble canopy at the end of "Top Gun 2," with Penny Benjamin in the back. Early MustangOne of the early Mustangs with the Allison engine, before they started using Merlins Empire of the Sun"P-51! Cadillac of the sky!" P-51 MustangJudging from the canopy and the paint scheme, that looks like one of the early Allison-engined models, before the Brits switched the engine out for the supercharged Merlin. It was one of the best fighters in the war. Friend of mine had a WWII P-51D with four swastikas painted on it. Hell of a plane. Still have a photo of me sitting in the cockpit. You haven't lived... until you've experienced one of these buzzing a field right in front of you. The extended range of these (with a belly tank) enabled them to escort American bombers to the target and back. Before that, our bombers were sitting ducks. First editionI believe it's a P-51A model as indicated by the scoop on top of the nose. The B model lost the top nose scoop. Flying HistoryThis is an awesome color photograph of an early P-51 Mustang Fighter plane. It's also neat that you can see the pilot looking back at the plane with the camera. I hope the pilot made it through the war. Thank you, sir, for your service in helping defeat tyranny! HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO ALL! But not that particular P-51Except maybe I have missed that the RAF was also using roundels with 5 points? And skipping the fin flash on the tail? As for sound, 20 years or so ago a wag at a local air show was running a CD on the public address system. A CD called "Checkflight Gustav" - i.e. the sounds of a Messerschmidt Bf 109 G flying by. Also a V12 engine. Gave some very interesting reactions from the very senior guests. Terrifying to have above youI think it was in the summer of 1970 or ’71 that my wife and I were sitting in my Triumph, stalled in a traffic jam waiting to enter the air show near Greensburg, Pennsylvania. We had been moving painfully slowly for a half hour, hot and bored, when suddenly the car rocked on its suspension (such as it was), and a noise like a hundred freight trains hit us like a fist. For a split second I saw something big zoom over us, and then it disappeared over the line of traffic in front of us. I thought it was a meteor. Then it circled around and came back straight toward us. It was Bob Hoover in his P-51 beating up the line of cars, flying what looked to be only a few feet above the vehicles. I can truly say I had never been so scared. I damn near bailed out myself. I suppose it was an honor to be bounced by Hoover, but it was definitely one of life’s yeastier experiences, and gave me an insight into what the German ground troops felt like in the waning years of WWII. British MustangThis is an Allison engined Mustang I delivered to the British end of April, 1942. AL958 behind the fuselage national marking is the British ID code for this aircraft. The red dot US national insignia was changed mid May, 1942. I assume the aircraft was marked "US" since it would look rather strange to have British aircraft buzzing around on check out flights. P-51s and P-51A were Allison engined with the carburetor air scoop above the engine. The canopy was indeed a cage, the top section swinging open to the right, the left glass panel opening to the left. The P-51B and C were almost identical but built at two different plants, with the Allison engine replaced by the British Merlin, Americanized by Packard. The familiar nose profile most people visualize appeared with the Packard engine. The canopy was still the framed cage. Once the D model came about, the version everyone thinks of finally evolved. Also got Hoovered I too had occasion to be real close to Bob Hoover's bright yellow mustang. DuPage County airshow '73 I think. I was a wee lad sitting on top of the family station wagon to get a good view. Station wagon was a huge and truly vile green Pymouth Satellite (with wood trim) that Bob chose as his airshow IP. US Air InsigniaRe: Early Model Submitted by PhotoFan "The pre-war red center dot in the national insignia, which had been iconic on American aircraft since 1919, was retired shortly after America entered WWII. It attracted the attention of trigger-happy gunners who thought they saw the rising sun of Japan. By the spring of 1942 most dots had been overpainted white." Actually, the WWI Air Insignia as shown on this fighter was still the official emblem until the creation of the US Air Force after WWII. However, the Army ordered the red ball overpainted white for any aircraft operating in a combat zone in 1942. Planes operating in the US or other non-combatant zones still bore the red ball in the center. For those interested, the design was a modification of the British roundel, with the center white circle changed to a star. The white star became a ubiquitous mark of the USA during WWII and was used on vehicles of all sorts. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Aviation, WW2)
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