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Archive: October 2015 (6 Posts)

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Tuning In to the World Series Before TV

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

The title of the 1939 Arthur Rothstein photograph below indicates that the men gathered on this Montrose, Colorado, sidewalk are watching the scoreboard, a blackboard mounted outside the entry of Daily Press Printing. But the two loudspeakers flanking the Daily Press storefront suggest the assembled may also be following a radio broadcast or perhaps very localized play-by-play call from …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Unlocking the Power of Primary Sources

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

If you are interested in learning more about visual literacy and historical thinking and about resources such as historical newspapers and photographs, you are in luck! Join us online for a free two-day event: “The Library of Congress and Teachers: Unlocking the Power of Primary Sources.” The virtual conference will take place October 27-28, 2015 …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Work Horses: Pulling their Weight

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Work horses are just that – horses that work. By pulling a cart or wagon, a plow or a carriage, horses worked for centuries in farming, transportation and other industries before being largely replaced by mechanized vehicles in much of the world. Many people today have no first-hand knowledge of horses pulling vehicles on the …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Providing Context with Chronicling America

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

My initial impression of the jovial sailors pictured below was that a letter “d” must have been left out of the annotated title in the photograph’s upper left corner. This World War I era photo from the Bain News Service is one of more than 15,000 photographs (a hefty subset of the 40,000 available from …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

“What’s this Gadget?”: More Mystery Photos

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

If you enjoy a good mystery, get ready to start sleuthing! This Friday, we will be adding a new group of mystery photos to the Library of Congress Flickr account. A portion of the glass negatives in the Harris & Ewing Collection came to us with no captions, providing many challenging photo mysteries to solve. …