Category:History

Apparently in 1911 Dr. T. Kennard Thomson proposed to expand New York into its adjacent waters for a grand total of 50 square miles.

From Big Think:

By Dr Thomson's estimates, enlarging New York according to his plans would cost more than digging the Panama Canal - but the returns would quickly repay the debt incurred and make New York the richest city in the world. He then goes on to describe how he would reclaim all that land. The plan's larger outlines: move the East River east, and build coffer dams from the Battery at Manhattan's southern tip to within a mile of Staten Island, on the other side of the Upper Bay, and the area in between them filled up with sand. This would enlarge Manhattan to an island several times its present size.

Here is one of his proposed expansion maps:

via thisisnthappiness

6 May 1937, Lakehurst, New Jersey

From Mail Online:

Almost a million images of New York and its municipal operations have been made public for the first time on the internet.

The city's Department of Records officially announced the debut of the photo database.

Culled from the Municipal Archives collection of more than 2.2 million images going back to the mid-1800s, the 870,000 photographs feature all manner of city oversight -- from stately ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings.

I miss you, New York.

I can't pass up sharing this.

I got an email from someone who's trying to sell a rare piece of computer history on eBay (they were responding to my listing on Craigslist and saw I had a tech-related site).

He's selling an MITS Altair 8800b turnkey 300/25 vintage computer with desk, dual disk drive, many floppy disks, Beehive B-100 Serial Terminal, two Pertec binders and a MITS binder/manual.

*Whew*

Here she is:

How much memory did she have? Oh a whopping 4-8 Kilobytes.

For comparison, my MacBook Pro has 8,388,608 kilobytes of of memory (8 gigs).

via @asymco

"December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." — Franklin D. Roosevelt

And so the United States entered World War II as a combatant. But, the war was also being fought on the homefront. Below are a few examples of how design worked its way into the propaganda machine.

via Attitude

via The National Archives

via tutsplus

The tubes are full of this stuff. Go explore.

From the Boston Globe:

On Oct. 24, 1861, with the push of a button, California's chief justice, Stephen J. Field, wired a message from San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, congratulating him on the transcontinental telegraph's completion that day. He added the wish that it would be a "means of strengthening the attachment which binds both the East and the West to the Union."

Writing blanks: "also known as 'school pieces' or 'Christmas pieces', these were single sheets printed from copper or wood engravings, issued by print sellers (and, later, children's booksellers), and sold to children across a broad socio-economic spectrum. 'Regularly published at least twice a year', they were intended as a form of sampler, the child filling in the blank space in the centre of a sheet with a set piece in her or his best penmanship. They were sold in book and print shops 'for the use of writing schools, at the vacations of Lady-day-Midsummer-Michaelmas-Christmas, &c.', as well as by street criers. Schools, and, in one recorded example, a workhouse overseer, distributed them.

via BibliOdyssey

Jason Oberholtzer defends his Lost Generation over at Forbes:

I reject any notion that my generation is afraid. However, I think it is fair to suggest that a generally mistrustful view of adulthood has become more common, and for defensible reasons. One can make a case-by-case argument that every institution we have been taught to hold in esteem has, in the last decade, given us ample reason to question their integrity.

The Church (already struggling to connect with progressive youth) is still dealing with the fallout of widespread pedophilia scandals; The Military is stuck in two unpopular wars (to be clear, the general opinion is that this reflects on the leadership and on the institution itself, not on the soldiers) in which a decisive victory seems to be impossible; The Government is viewed with such cynicism that being able to "run as an outsider" is a more important quality than "being literate," -corruption is expected, fidelity is antiquated and politics play out like a gladiatorial event where campaign promises are "moves" and "countermoves" to which no elected official is held accountable; and finally, The Market has been handled so irresponsibly that we now have Amanda M. Fairbanks writing about us as The Lost Generation.

Well fucking said.

Hemmings Blog on the history of New York City and automobiles:

The pairing of the automobile and the narrow, teeming, crowded canyons of New York City is endlessly fascinating. The Standard Catalog lists 334 different manufacturers based in New York City (most of which, surely, built no more than one or two cars, if any), but beyond that, the Big Apple has a history of dealerships, driving, navigation, cab riding, and automotive legislation all its own.

As Just A Car Guy mentions, 334 is a lot of manufacturers.

I love New York.