THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PHOTO ARCHIVE • FRAMED PRINTS • STOCK IMAGES

Butler's signal tower at Bermuda Hundred, Virginia, circa 1865. Wet-plate glass negative, left half of stereograph. Photograph from the main Eastern theater of war, the Army of the James, June 1864-April 1865. View full size.

"Marconi Control Table" at a radio station in British Mandate Palestine circa 1939. View full size. | Alternate view. Glass negative from the archives of the Matson Photo Service, which documented the American Colony in Jerusalem.

A radio mast in Ramallah, British-Mandate Palestine, sometime around 1939. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, Matson Photo Service. Alternate view.

Radio masts in Ramallah, British Mandate Palestine, circa 1939. 5x7 dry plate glass negative from the Matson Photo Service collection. View full size.

February 19, 1925. "M.S. Strock measuring radio lengths at the Bureau of Standards." View full size. 4x5 glass negative, National Photo Co. Collection.

Lester Picker listens to his shortwave radio through earphones while convalescing after breaking his back when he fell 55 feet erecting an aerial for the radio. Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, April 18, 1922. View full size. (Updated with additional information on Lester — click here and scroll down.)

A radio studio control room in British Mandate Palestine between 1936 and 1939. View full size. 5x7 dry plate glass negative, Matson Photo Service.

The Owens & Beers record shop at 81 Chambers Street in New York circa 1915-1920. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

Waldman's music store in New York, May 1921. A nice selection of records and Victrolas, with Nipper keeping an eye on things. Does anyone know where this was? View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

November 1942. Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit. General view showing tank which stores gas from the coke oven. Square building and extension in middle ground is where coal is fed to a feeder belt and then transferred to a storage place on top of the coke oven. The coal is then dropped into three inverted bottle-like containers and from there fed directly into the coke ovens. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Arthur Siegel.

"Amateur Wireless Station" with headset circa 1920. Note photo of the young operator. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

"Auto Street Cleaner" circa 1913 in New York City. (Hello, alternate side of the street parking.) View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.

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June 1942. Electrical transformer at the TVA Chickamauga Dam near Chattanooga. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer.

This network of black magnetic beads, smaller than a postage stamp, is one of a number of input-output "memory" units in the new "704" electronic calculator built by International Business Machines. This particular "memory" unit of the 704 instantaneously strips all information off a slow-moving punch card, stores the data momentarily in the form of magnetic charges, and passes along the individual items, one at a time, to a lightning-fast calculating section, which can handle around 10 million operations an hour, theoretically replacing 3,000 hand-operated adding machines. Orders are in for over thirty 704's, which I.B.M. will rent at some $20,000 a month each. View full size. Photo by Ezra Stoller.