While browsing the Library of Congress Historical American Engineering Record, I came across some photographs of something I had actually seen. A few years ago, I visited the Wyman Gordon Forge in Worcester, Massachusetts in an official capacity to see their (almost) unique 50000 ton press in action. For a piece of metal bashing machinery,…
Category: Library of Congress Images
#380 – Library of Congress Images – The Long Stairway, Pittsburgh
The photographs of Jack Delano have been featured before on this blog, and these were the documentary images of and around the railway. This is a slightly different subject matter and style of photography. There are a few different variations of this scene on the Library of Congress website, but this one just works best…
#379 – Locomotive and a watertower at the Erie Railroad yards, Jersey City
This was a bit of a one off in the New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection on the Library of Congress website. It doesn’t appear to be part of a series and I can find no other railway photographs in the same collection. But it’s a good ‘un nonethless, even though it’s needed…
#378 – Library of Congress Images – Ocean Liners
There’s something rather elegant in the design of the ships from the late Victorian / early Edwardian era. There’s something about the low set superstructures on top of the high hulls that made them look quite racy. This is the RMS Oceanic, the largest ship in the world at the time of it’s launch in 1899,…
#375 – Library of Congress Images – Building Liberty Ships at Bethlehem Fairfield Shipyard
Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, Baltimore, Maryland. A shipyard with a crane. (sic) One of the biggest contributions America made to the war effort was its enormous industrial base and associated ingenuity. It was Henry Fords protege’s from the motor industry who were brought in to help the conversion of the peace time manufacturing industry to an incredible machine…
#374 – Library of Congress Images – Industrial Landscape Panorama
This is a join up of two 8×10 glass negatives so as you can imagine the digital file is huge! Panoramas are (relatively) easy to produce digitally, especially when you have the right tripod head, a fast computer and the right software, but taking one using a large format camera and making darkroom prints must…
#373 – Library of congress images – Bingham copper mine
Bingham Copper Mine, Utah. Carr Fork Canyon as seen from ‘G’ bridge. In the background can be seen a train with waste or over-burden material on its way to the dump. Bingham Canyon, Utah. Ore train at a mine of the Utah Copper Company. Until recently Bingham Copper Mine was the largest open…
#371 – Library of Congress Images – Allied Railways (and British Engines) in Iran
An American locomotive with an American soldier crew hauling freight to Russia somewhere in Iran. I was quite surprised to see world war 2 photographs of the Persian Corridor in the Library of Congress. This was the supply chain set up through Iran by the allies to supply Russia by road and rail. The motive…
#368 – Library of Congress Images – a trip on the Santa Fe in Black & White
People talk about how in the digital age, there is a lot of ‘machine gunning’ of scenes with dozens of photographs taken, and not all with a great deal of care and attention. In looking through the photographs of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway it seems that the practice wasn’t unheard of in…
#367 – Library of Congress Images – Santa Fe in Black & White
Going up? Or down? Wheel shop. Not sure what the significance of the white painted ones are – dummy ones for works use only? Or maybe ones that are waiting for machining / new tyres? This almost has a production line-like feel to it. The workshop is clearly quite large and by british standards quite modern. Interesting to…
Mechanical Landscapes 