My friend writes:
This is the first 35mm film ever. It was taken by camera mounted on the front of a cable car. It was filmed only four days before the quake and shipped by train to NY for processing. This film was "lost" for many years.
This film was long thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. The dates was figured from New York trade papers announcing the film showing, to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall, & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (they even know who owned them and when the plates were issued!)
The clock tower at the end of Market Street at the Embarcadero wharf is still there. The number of automobiles is staggering for 1906. (I'm also wondering... How many "street cleaning" people were employed to pick up after the horses?* Talk about going green!) I can’t believe how disorganized the street scene is – cars, horses, horses and buggies, horses and wagons, street cars, pedestrians (notice all the men in suits) – all going every which way! Good thing they are moving at a slow pace! Also bicycles....
Freedom. Too bad San Francisco has lost it today.
*When horse-shit in the city used to be the real thing, please await my latest work (in progress,) A Genealogy of Left Dhimmi Fascism, which has notes on comparable figures from London c.1906. Will include them here when I see them next. Meanwhiles, c.f. Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization; Paul Johnson, Modern Times, and Simon Winchester, A Crack in the Edge of the World.
1 comment:
There's a music track to this video which I didn't realise till a friend left word of it. I play it as it was. I like the music, but one might try it too as a quiet vision of the past.
Post a Comment