These color pictures of the vibrant landscapes and towns of Switzerland were created using the Photochrom process, a technique that colorizes monochrome images with precision. While the prints may deceptively look like color photographs, but in fact, ar…
Stonehenge, on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire in southern England, is certainly one of the most well-known and well-studied prehistoric megalithic monuments. Scholars had determined that there was a very long process of construction and use of Stonehe…
Victorians were known for their conservative way of life, but these portraits show that many men of that era were unafraid of showing affection. The provocative black-and-white 19th-century images show men posing in surprisingly intimate embraces. They …
These vintage photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States show teams of horses being used to move entire houses to new locations. With the rapid railway and urban development boom, a lot of people found themselves looking to …
These late-19th and early-20th century photographs show some of the last Maori women to wear the traditional Tā moko face marking before it was outlawed by British colonialists. Ta moko is the name for the permanent body and face marking by Maori, the indi…
This collection of hand-tinted lantern slides depicts popular tourist destinations in Norway around the turn of the 19th century. The collection consists of slides produced by at least two British photographers – professional photographer Samuel J. Beck…
Hooverville was the popular name attributed to shanty towns that sprung up throughout the United States during the Great Depression. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and was …
The rapid rise of automobiles at the turn of the 20th century presented an immediate problem: where to park all these vehicles roaming the streets? The concept for vertical parking garages was and is driven by two factors: a need for parking spaces and …
The crinoline appeared on the fashion scene in the mid-1800s and took its name from the French word crin (“horsehair”), a stiff material made using horsehair — and "linen." A crinoline (hoop) is defined as a framework consisting of round/oval circles (s…
Manzanar, Spanish for “apple orchard,” began soon after 1900 in the dream of a fruit-growing empire and today is a national symbol of America’s decision at the onset of World War II to confine thousands of its citizens of Japanese ancestry behind barbed wi…
France became dominant in the high fashion (couture or haute couture) industry by the end of the 19th century through the establishment of the great couturier houses. The technology started to redefine Western society in many ways and this continued int…
Advertising has become an integral part of our socio-economic lives and it’s carefully designed to speak to the hearts and minds of consumers. It taps into our psyche, hopes, dreams, goals, and fears. In this article, we will flip through the pages of h…
In the 1860s, the Russian-American Telegraph Company set out to telegraphically connect the United States and Europe using lines running through the Bering Strait and Siberia. The failed expedition marked one of the first explorations of the vast Siberi…
Tucked away among the canyons and mountainous terrain in southern Jordan, the city of Petra has stood for well over 2,500 years. In that time, Petra has gone from an early settlement to a crucial and wealthy trading hub in the region, and then to a forg…
Grant Wood‘s “American Gothic” shows the images of a man and a woman standing in front of a small wooden house. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 20th-century rural Americana while the man is adorned in overalls covered by a suit ja…
In 1899, a group of French illustrators led by Jean-Marc Côté was tasked with imagining what France would look like in the year 2000. Their ideas weren’t always on the money but many have been realized albeit not exactly according to the original drawin…
Amasunzu is a traditionally Rwandan hairstyle that was once worn by men, as well as by unmarried women in order to indicate to potential suitors that they were single and of marriageable age. The hair is styled into crests and is frequently described as cresce…
In May 1985, as one of the first measures under the new general secretary of the Communist party, Michael Gorbachev, the last big Soviet-style campaign was set in motion, a campaign to curb alcohol consumption. It was a forceful and ruthless campaign, w…
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, photographer Clifton R. Adams was commissioned by the National Geographic to document life in England. Adams’ beautiful autochromes—a process of producing color images by using potato starch—present images that capture…
With the rise of the daily newspapers in the 1880s, more than half of all newspapers in the United States were sold by newsboys (and a few newsgirls). Newspapers that previously had appeared only in morning editions began to be offered in afternoon edit…