783 replies to this topic

[Yuli Ban]

Nihang Bodyguard, c.1865

[Yuli Ban]

 

The First Photograph, 1826 or 1827

[Yuli Ban]

...is not actually the oldest photograph in the world.

 

This is.

Taken by the same person, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, but in 1825. It's a photo of an engraving, so it's kind of cheating.

 

[Yuli Ban]

Oldest photo of a person (bottom left), 1838

Photography pioneer Louis Daguerre took this image of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris in 1838, and unintentionally recorded the first person in a photograph. As Retronaut describes, the figure down at the bottom left getting his shoes shined was the only person on the street during the long exposure to pause long enough to appear.

[Yuli Ban]

First self-portrait (and thus first clear photo of a person). First proof humans existed before the 1900s, you c y n i c s.
 

The oldest known photographic self-portrait is generally credited as Robert Cornelius‘ daguerreotype (the Library of Congress safely hedges this as “the earliest extant American portrait photo”) made outside his family store back in 1839. For it being such an early time of self-perception on film, he definitely had a good handle on his angles.

[Yuli Ban]

First aerial photo (that has survived)
 

The first photographs to be taken with an aerial view were actually by French photographer and balloonist Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, aka Nadar, but despite his intrepid lugging of photographic equipment into the air, his work has been lost. However, the earliest aerial photograph that we know of is this vision of Boston, called “Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It“, taken by James Wallace Black and Samuel Archer King from October 13, 1860, showing Boston from 2,066 feet in the air, certainly the first photograph of Boston from above.

[Yuli Ban]

First News Photo

 

In 1848, the first photograph to be used to illustrate a news story was made. This photograph of the 1848 revolution in Paris, a four-day insurrection in June that left thousands dead in the streets of Paris, was published in the Journées illustrées de la révolution de 1848 and is now in the Musée d’Orsay. Even in the distortion you can make out the barricade on the narrow street.

[Yuli Ban]

First photograph from space (October 24, 1946)
 

It’s rather astounding that just about a century after we first photographed space, we have the first photograph from space, taken from a V-2 missile. The camera itself on the missile was totally destroyed when it plummeted back to earth at a speed of 500 feet a second, but the film itself survived to show the Earth for the first time from space.

[Yuli Ban]

Operation Overlord, June 1944, Normandy Beach

[Yuli Ban]

Manhattan at sunset from the George Washington Bridge, December 1936.
 

[Yuli Ban]

Still from the latest YA dystopian rom-thriller? Nope, a Hooverville from 1937 Seattle
 

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Every single person you see in this video is dead (Or at least, very likely they're just fetuses or newborns)

 

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Berlin 1936 Olympics (Time_Traveler originally posted this)

[Yuli Ban]

Color photos of the geisha in Japan, late 1800s

 

http://www.buzzfeed....800s#.wfVNbkbBM

 

 

1885: A geisha plays the shamisen, a three-stringed instrument.

[Yuli Ban]

Taken in 1872. No idea exactly where it was taken, but the nation was France.

[Yuli Ban]

Czarist Russia, 1910-1912

 

[Yuli Ban]

More Czarist Russia, 1910-1912. Peasants, former serfs, workers, soldiers, people who are about a decade away from killin' all their rich masters and gettin' owned by new ones who pretend to be poor.

 

[Yuli Ban]

Ireland 1890-1900