Turn-of-the-Century Films of Street Scenes for reference
Greymom
Posts: 1,139
in The Commons
Just found a YouTube channel which features early films (late 1890's to 1930's, mostly) of street scenes, including some mobile tours, from major cities (London, Paris, etc.). These look like very good refereces, not just for the street areas and buildings, but also for transport, costumes, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUBuSn_Io93AMpOSw88afQ
After watching a few, what struck me is how little clutter there was visible. Not much in the way of trash cans, vendors, potter plants, trash, etc. in most cases.

Comments
Some real treasures in that lot, the 1915 - Views of Sarajevo is a goldmine for me.
Got so side-tracked I almost forgot the last PA sale shopping cart I was trimming.
Thanks for the link.
The commentary was most telling. A great resource. Thank you.
YouTube has become an amazing resource for esoteric references! You can find a drone tour of just about any henge or stone circle or passage tomb in Europe. Examples of people playing the Nykkelharpa. Saami tribespeople singing in costume in their native tongue. People doing folksongs with traditional instruments in Faroese and Icelandic. Several new vids on Pictish Ogham writing. Plus all kinds of speculative stuff on lost civilizations, aliens, races of giants, cryptids....
This one is pretty good too. This person only posted the one film. "A trip through japan with the ywca ca 1919"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ3RteagLoY
Another channel with slideshows of old pictures:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmhKTR42oZtRar66bW-0Hxg
Lots of everyday wear from the 1800's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YPeSADoBV0&t=5s
Berlin and Munich, 1900-1914, colorized:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-m9A8mY-U0
San Francisco just before the Great Earthquake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RF9wV-57dE
Grocery store scenes, ~1930 to 1970
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKuddr7f5HA
Glasgow, late 1800's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8hS1ALqUU0
Slideshow of pictues (some colorized) of Japan in the late Edo period (mostly), references for some of Sugatak's fine products.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmQxsmEx5pk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6hD50HWNYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsCn9hisM_k
Too bad "Tom Swift and his Electronic Retroscope" was fiction.
I hope @Stonemason sees the first link so he can finish Streets of Old Jerusalem.
Very useful. I love my local history, and someone on one of the Facebook groups I'm a member of posted a video earlier by this guy...
https://www.facebook.com/Timetravelimages/
He makes videos by manipulating old photos of a UK town or region together with some recent photos and a few effects, in date order. A lot of them have a small inset in one top corner showing the reigning monarch of the day and another showing who was prime minister. Obviously the contents of the insets will change as the timeline moves along. I started writing this post a day or so ago and got distracted, then forgot about it until a video of the Culloden battlefield going back in time came floating down my Facebook feed. A clever idea and a great resource for renderers and writers.
Those are really cool videos! Thanks.
It wasn't a throwaway society like we have now. There was very little that came pre-packaged, so no candybar wrappers and fast food bags. Drinks and some foods were starting to be commercially bottled or sold in cans, but the containers had a deposit that could be refunded, so no one discarded those. Paper was too valuable to toss away, as it could be for starting the fire or as toilet tissue... I remember a story Marcel Delgado (the man who built the stop motion puppets for films like King Kong and MIghty Joe Young) telling a story about how he would carefully wash the paper the meat from the butcher came in so he could use it as drawing paper. These days so much is designed to be tossed in the trash to the point where it's not even possible to change a battery yourself, even for complex, expensive electronics like iPads and iPhones.
even as late as the 50s and 60s, ever before there was recycling as we know it, there was recycling. When I was growing up we were a family of 5 Mum, Dad, 2 brothers and me in the middle of the two brothers, once a week we put out 1 dustbin for emptying, just one dustbin, standard size (apparently modern equivalent is 90 ltr) Newspaper (the ones that hadn't been used for lighting the fire) were bundled tidily and tied, placed on top of the bin to be given to thrifty shopkeepers as wrapping and packing paper. Cereals for the children came in cardboard boxes, with a waxed paper inner bag sometimes. All sorts of uses for cardboard boxes, The wax paper bags were saved, they also had all sorts of uses. Butter and margarine came in greaseproof paper wrappings, That wrapping could be used to grease baking tins when you made cakes etc, instead of buying new, Dry goods and sweets etc tended to come in paper bags, which could sometime be re-used or composted, or helped to light the fire. Kitchen waste ie potato peelings, etc would go on the compost heap. Everyone who had a garden had a compost heap, or gifted their vegetable waste to a neighbour who did. Magazines were taken to the various surgeries when you visited, so others could read them while they waited, so think Doctors, Dentsts, vets, and hospital waiting rooms. Also some of the Ladies mags would probably make their way to the local hairdressing salon. Actual food waste, well there would be very little compared to nowadays, especially over here this side of the pond. Having lived with food rationing for not just the duration of WW2, but several years after, food was not wasted, In some area the local pig farmers would put out "pig bins" where people could dispose of any small amount of waste food they might have, and this was cooked up into pig swill. Bottles, as has been said were returned. Milk arrived on the doorstep in a bottle, you used it, washed the bottle and then put it out on the doorstep for the milkman to collect when he delivered the next days milk. Fizzy drink and cordial bottles were returned to the shop, and you got a few coppers from the shopkeeper for each one. Some enterprising kids would try and steal a few empties form the crates where they were stored and thus get extra pennies to supplement their pocket money. It was just the way we lived in those days.
I put out one bin of trash once a month or less so even today it depends on what you eat as to how much trash you generate. Also if you don't eat meat or pre-prepared foods like TV dinners and clean your plate there is even no need at all to get the trash out in a hurry because there won't be anything in it organic to rot. My trash is about 98% plastics (embarrassingly almost all 2 litre bottles of a cornucopia of sugar free soda pops in different flavors of the WalMart and Kroger housebrands but hey, the water here tastes like it came out of a swimming pool) and 2% paper which modern automated sorting recycling machines easily sort through to recycle. I didn't plan it that way it is just a consequence of being vegetarian and poor (so I can't afford the exhorbantly priced prepackaged vegan foods which have started to become quite popular). I could probably put out my trash quarterly or less if I removed all the air from the soda bottles but the air helps the sorting process.
I use the Internet Archive A LOT. Can find just about anything under the sun there :).
Laurie
I just wish someone would post pictures of Stonehenge being built.....oh, wait......never mind...... : )
As it turns out, the images you seek can be found in this documentary by noted not-a-scientist Eric Idle: "Did Dinosaurs Build Stonehenge?"...
Yes, of course they did! That's why they find all those Auroch bones in digs in the area, they paid for the construction in roasted Aurochs!
It was probably Nessie's Welsh cousins.
Ah, yes! The "Teggies" of Llyn Tegid and Llyn Bala were known to be fond of BBQ! They could carry the stones from the quarry on the way. It all makes sense now!
Yes, that is an amazing resource! So was Google Print until they shut it down. Google Print had the only copy of a book on the historical etymology of Celtic languages I have ever found.
That is a very cool site! It will be a very handy reference!
Not to mention that seldom mentioned "Deinosoriad Rheoli!" graffitti on the Keystone. ;)
That inscription does not fit the established narrative of "Big Archaeology"! And nobody will talk about the crude inscription of the head and paws of a plesiosaur-like creature with the words "Roedd Teggie yma" (Teggie was here). : )
Some more great historical resouce vids:
Asian cities 1930's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuetuYD-3Vg
A list of videos, including 1884 Vietnam:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSoPLkmWb7wLC3OXDWCietA
Another big collection of old photos:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5PVK1i5myMFBNzsOeH4m4Q
One set from this collection:
Photographs of Landmarks Around Victorian London (1865)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs78z04vsEo
Lots of Daguerreotypes too:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHr-flHcUHn3v16Zd2r8H-r9VdjAvoZAa