Via Lloyd Alter (and others). Previously: The pinhole camera: low-tech photography

More at the DIY Book Scanning Community, a group of over 300 DIY’ers who believe that the future of digital books is too important to be decided solely by corporate interests. Related: DIY Book Binding & Kite Aerial Photography.

More than 1,400 Walter McClintock glass lantern slides at the Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

“Pittsburgh native Walter McClintock graduated from Yale in 1891. In 1896 he traveled west as a photographer for a federal commission investigating national forests. McClintock became friends with the expedition’s Blackfoot Indian scout, William Jackson or Siksikakoan. When the commission completed its field work, Jackson introduced McClintock to the Blackfoot community of northwestern Montana. Over the next twenty years, supported by the Blackfoot elder Mad Wolf, McClintock made several thousand photographs of the Blackfoot, their homelands, their material culture, and their ceremonies. Like his contemporary, the photographer Edward Curtis, McClintock believed that Indian communities were undergoing swift, dramatic transformations that might obliterate their traditional culture. He sought to create a record of a life-way that might disappear. He wrote books, mounted photographic exhibitions, and delivered numerous public lectures about the Blackfoot.”

Below some pictures of their homes.

Many more Walter McClintock glass lantern slides at the Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Three wonderful collections from the Library of Congress, showing obsolete technologies.

1. The World’s Transportation Commission Photograph Collection contains nearly nine hundred images by American photographer William Henry Jackson. In addition to railroads, elephants, camels, horses, sleds and sleighs, sedan chairs, rickshaws, and other types of transportation, Jackson photographed city views, street and harbor scenes, landscapes, local inhabitants, and Commission members as they travelled through North Africa, Asia, Australia, and Oceania.

Below: Boatmen towing sailboat against the wind up the Pieho to Peking.

Workmen repairing railroad track:

A camel train on the desert:

Chinese gunboat:

2. The Photochrom Print Collection has almost 6,000 views of Europe and the Middle East and 500 views of North America.
Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created
by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit
Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like
photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches. 

Below: the knights’ hall, Mont St Michel, France:

The beach, Scheveningen, Holland:

Street in the old town, I, Biskra, Algeria:

3. The Tissandier Collection contains approximately 975 items documenting the early history of aeronautics with
an emphasis on balloon flight in France and other European countries.
Subjects include general and technical images of balloons, airships,
and flying machines; portraits of famous balloonists; views of numerous
ascensions, accidents, and world’s fairs; cartoons featuring balloon
themes; pictorial and textual broadsides; and colorful ephemera and
poster advertisements. There are also several hundred illustrations
clipped from books and newspapers. The pictures, created by many
different artists, span the years 1773 to 1910, with the bulk dating
1780-1890.

Via trialsanderrors and Tecnología Obsoleta (who highlights New York pictures).

By mikel uribetxeberria at a new f*cking wilderness. Via Pruned. More.