This is cool. The Library of Congress recently released over 1500 pictures that were taken by government photographers in the years leading up to and during World War II (1939 to 1945). The pictures were taken as slides, and were experimenting with color film, which had only recently been developed. When these amazing photographs were taken, there was no way (yet) to print the pictures in color, so the slides were archived. They were only recently printed and are now available to the public from the Library of Congress website. You can view them, search for certain subjects (I, of course, had to look at all of the food ones), including location - I found several photographs for Colorado, where I was born, and downloaded them to print out for my grandparents. Below are a few of my food favorites, and amazingly enough, many of the vegetables (especially tomatoes and these eggplants) look like what we consider "heirloom" varieties, that we pay premium for these days if we don't grow them ourselves. Also interesting were the prices of things - oranges for a penny!
15.2.06
A Page in U.S. History
written by Michelle at 11:15 AM
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6 comments from you:
Those are killer photos of things from the past. I love seeing how things were before I was born (when dirt was invented). Sometimes, it makes me long for simplier times but I am sure they had their troubles then too. Nice post!
Hey, ya little whippersnapper up there -- Dirt was invented before we ALL were born! P'tooey.
Thanks, Michelle, for this fantastic post and link. The pictures are great.
Have you availed yourself of some of the antique photos at the USDA site? I don't have the address at the moment, but a little poking around would surely produce results.
xx
great photos!
Wonderful photos! Thanks! The fact that they are in colour make them look so modern, I still live with the childish notion that life then was in black and white. Sad isn't it??
Those are some truly lovely photos! I'm definitely going to check out that website. Thanks for the heads up.
As for the questions you asked, but I never got 'round to answering...here is my belated reply--I've got two years max, before I finish up the phd and I'm working on fruit fly embryonic muscle development. I suspect we are in different fields since I wasn't familiar with the meeting you attended. Looked pretty interesting...so what do you play with, day to day?
Great blog!
Vickie: ha ha ha; sweetie, if you're older than dirt, you'd better share some of those beauty secrets because I can only dream of looking that good when I'm you're age!
Cookiecrumb: (my most favorite cheese sandwhich *wink, wink*) glad you liked them! I'll have to check out that USDA site soon.
Clare: thanks!
Ilva: I do the same thing! I think it would be really interesting to see old-time pictures of Italians and Swedes that time too...and to see the differences and similarities.
mc: I traveled on over to your site and meant to go back again but got caught up in an experiment! pooey! thanks for stopping by again! my boyfriend does nervous system development (mostly motoneurons) in fruit flies...i use microarrays to study the genetic basis behind physiological reactions to environmental stress in a deep-sea worm and the Dungeness crab! whew. that's long! mostly i play with frozen tissue and RNA and DNA :)
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