historical

Want to See What Your Photo Would Look Like on an Old Commodore 64 Computer?

We're entering the days of 4K, 5K, and 8K monitors becoming a standard feature of workspaces, but just 30 years ago the best selling computers could only display fractions of a megapixel in resolution. The Commodore 64, the best-selling computer of all time from 1982, had a "high-resolution" mode of just 320x200 and a normal multicolor bitmapped mode of 160x200.

64yourself is a new web app that lets you see what your modern digital photos would have looked like back in the day on a C64 machine.

These 1913 Autochrome Portraits Are From the Early Days of Color Photography

Mervyn O'Gorman was an English engineer whose artistic interests turned him into one of the early pioneers of color photography. Using the Autochrome Lumière process that was launched in 1907, O'Gorman shot images that are now regularly featured in exhibitions of early color photos.

Among his best known works are a series of color photos of his daughter, Christina, taken in 1913.

Old Film Roll from eBay Reveals Photos of Korea from Half a Century Ago

Photographer Ben Larsen purchased a lot on eBay that included several old rolls of film, one of which was a roll of Kodak Plus-X Pan black and white 35mm film. Not knowing anything about the roll, Larsen tossed it into a tank while processing his own roll of Kodak Tri-X at home. To his surprise, the film emerged from the developer with a large number of old photos of Seoul, South Korea, from five decades ago.

The Earliest Known Photos of People Smiling

The following is a collection of some of the earliest known images of people smiling, starting with a pair of soldiers in the Mexican American War in 1847 and up to a group of soldiers near the end of the Civil War.

If early images of people smiling do not come as a surprise to you, there are a few things to note. Among other things, a portrait of a person with a grin of any kind is quite a rare find in the early decades of photography.

How an Unknown Photographer Named Carleton E. Watkins Helped Save Yosemite

Did you know that a single unknown photographer helped change the course of history for Yosemite with his photos back in 1861? The video above tells the story of Carleton Watkins, a man whose photos of Yosemite made their way to President Abraham Lincoln and helped influence the decision to turn the area into a National Park.

The First Photo of an Execution by Electric Chair

The photograph above has been called the most famous tabloid photo of the 1920s. It's the first photo showing an execution by electric chair, and was captured by photographer Tom Howard at the execution of Ruth Snyder back on January 12, 1928.

The Worlds First Hyperlapse, Shot in 1995 on a Bolex 16mm Film Camera

Hyperlapses, or timelapses with the camera traveling great distances, have become all the rage these days, but have you ever wondered how far back the technique goes? The short film above, titled "Pacer," was captured back in 1995 using a Bolex 16mm film camera. It is being called the world's oldest hyperlapse.

Photos of Presidents Throwing the Ceremonial First Pitch Through the Ages

The first ceremonial first pitch ever thrown was tossed by former Japanese Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu at a baseball game in Koshien, Japan, back in 1908. Two years later, US President William Howard Taft started the tradition in the United States, tossing a pitch (shown above) in Washington DC on the opening day of the Washington Senators' season. Since then, every US president has thrown at least one ceremonial first pitch, and they have all been documented in photographs.

Here's a look at some historical photos of US presidents throwing their ceremonial pitches.

Weegee Shares His Thoughts on News Photography

As New York City prepares to digitize and publish thousands of historical crime scene photos captured by photo unit police officers, here's a look at the subject from the photojournalist's point of view.

The 9-minute above is an interview with Weegee, a photographer known for his gritty black-and-white photos of crime scenes and urban life. It's from the 1958 vinyl record "Famous Photographers Tell How."

Historical NYPD Crime Scene Photos to be Digitized and Released to the Public

The photographer known as Weegee made his mark on photography by hunting for crime scenes and uncomfortable shots in New York City. We may soon be seeing some of the crime scenes he captured from an alternate perspective.

Thousands of historical crime scene photographs shot by the New York Police Department will soon be digitized and released for the public to see.

These Are Three of the Earliest Photos Ever Made

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce is a French photography pioneer who is credited with capturing the oldest surviving photograph of a real world scene, a print made back in 1825. In addition to that famous image, titled View from the Window at Le Gras, Niépce also created a number of other photos that are recognized as being some of the earliest photos ever made.

America’s First Female Photojournalist, Jessie Tarbox Beals, With Her Cameras

Here's a photograph of Jessie Tarbox Beals, America's first female photojournalist, with her camera on a street a century ago. While most female photographers of her time shot photos from the peace and safety of photo studios, Beals ventured into the world of photojournalism and made a name for herself through her tenacity, self-promotion, and freelance news photos.

A Blast from the Past: How the World of Photography Was Changing Back in 1887

Back in 1887, a photography instructor named Edward M. Estabrooke published a book titled Photography in the Studio and in the Field. It was "a practical manual designed as a companion alike to the professional and the amateur photographer."

Filled with detailed information on how to practice photography with the equipment and technologies of the time, the book also contains interesting passages that describe how the world of photography was changing.

A Look Inside the World’s First Photo Book from 1843

Want to see what it's like to flip through the first photo book that ever appeared in the world? The online show Objectivity recently paid a visit to The Royal Society in London to see its copy of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, a 1843 book by English botanist and photographer Anna Atkins that's considered to be the first book ever to be illustrated exclusively with photographs.

A Look at How Michael Paul Smith Creates Historical Photos with Incredibly Detailed Models

Here's a fascinating video about how photographer Michael Paul Smith creates and photographs Elgin Park, a 20th century town created through miniature 1/24th-scale models. Smith creates incredibly realistic photos by capturing the detailed dioramas with an ordinary compact camera, and his images have gone viral in recent years on the Internet (the project has over 70 million views on Flickr).

Rare Portraits of the Nigerian Royal Court from the Mid-1900s

Noted Nigerian photographer Chief S.O. Alonge was the very first indigenous photographer of the Royal Court of Benin in Nigeria, and for some five decades, he captured thousands of Kodak glass-plate negatives of the ritual, pageantry and regalia of the Nigerian obas (kings), their wives and retainers.

Now, these rarely seen images and the fascinating world they preserved are being pulled out of the archives of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art and shown to the world once more.

These Were the First Wildlife Photographs Published in National Geographic

Did you know that after National Geographic published its first wildlife photographs in July 1906, two of the National Geographic Society board members "resigned in disgust"? They argued that the reputable magazine was "turning into a 'picture book'".

Luckily for us, it did turn out to become quite a picture book. Those first wildlife photos published in the magazine were captured by George Shiras, III, and marked quite a few "firsts."

Rooftop Photo from the 1920s May be the First Group Selfie in History

We've shared what we believe to be the first ever selfie in history, but we've never had occasion to share the photograph you see being taken in the image above. Taken in the 1920s on a rooftop in New York City, what you see being captured might very well be the first ever group selfie... although we're pretty sure they didn't call it that.

Haunting Photographs of Nagasaki Taken One Day After the Atomic Bomb Dropped

This week, 24 incredible, powerful, haunting photographs will be going up on the auction block at Bonhams in New York. These are photographs that are newly-discovered, and many of them have never been seen before as they were taken with a faulty camera and never made it in front of the public eye.

They are photographs of Nagasaki, Japan, taken by celebrated Japanese military photographer Yosuke Yamahata the day after an atomic bomb was dropped on it and Hiroshima.