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Selected plates from How I killed the tiger; being an account of my encounter with a royal Bengal tiger, with an appendix containing some general information about India (1902), a small book by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Sheffield detailing his close brush with death by tiger. As the author explains in his introduction: My main...
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A selection from a collection of early 20th century lantern slides held at the Fylkesarkivet of Sogn og Fjordane, a county in the west of Norway. The slides are produced by at least two British photographers – professional photographer Samuel J. Beckett and amateur photographer P. Heywood Hadfield, who was a ship’s surgeon employed...
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Not the same Vanity Fair of current fame, this was a version published by The Commonwealth Publishing Company of New York City, incorporated in February 1902 but which went bankrupt in April 1904. “Vanity Fair” has been the title for at least 5 magazines, and as a phrase became popular through John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s...
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Illustrations from Vaught’s Practical Character Reader, a book on phrenology by L. A. Vaught published in 1902. As he confidently states in his Preface: The purpose of this book is to acquaint all with the elements of human nature and enable them to read these elements in all men, women and children in all...
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A compilation of double exposures, an accidental phenomenon no longer possible with digital cameras. As well as the unintentional displayed here (though the first picture is debatable, and the saxophonist too), it was a common practise to use double exposures to create what became known as “Spirit Photographs”. One of the most prolific of...
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17th January 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Konstantin Stanislavski, a Russian theatre director whose theories on acting revolutionised the art. His techniques revolved around getting actors to draw believable emotions to their performances. The method that was originally created and used by Stanislavski from 1911 to 1916 was based on...
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Contrary to what many believe, Santa Claus as we know him today – sleigh riding, gift-giving, rotund and white bearded with his distinctive red suit trimmed with white fur – was not the creation of the Coca Cola Company. Although their Christmas advertising campaigns of the 1930s and 40s were key to popularising the...
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Plates from a “Description of the Brain of Mr. Charles Babbage, F.R.S” published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1909). Credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs, Charles Babbage is considered to be the “father of the computer”. See the description of the...
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José Guadalupe Posada (1851–1913) was a Mexican illustrator known for his satirical and politically acute calaveras. Deriving from the Spanish word for ‘skulls’, these calaveras were illustrations featuring skeletons which would, after Posada’s death, become closely associated with the mexican holiday Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Most of these calaveras...
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Actresses featured in the Moriarty playing card series issued in 1916 by the Movie Souvenir Card Co. of Cincinnati, Ohio. The back of each card is a reproduction in multiple-colors of the painting “The Chariot Race.” The ad card within the pack proclaims: “Get a few packs of “Movies”–A Veritable Picture Gallery of the...
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Illustrated initials from Deutsche Märchen seit Grimm (German Fairytales since Grimm), a German fairytale book from 1919. (All images from an online copy of the book housed at the Internet Archive, donated by the University of Connecticut Libraries. Hat-tip to Pinterest user Michele Finnegan) HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is...
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Images of the illustrative radiographs from Cunningham’s Manual of Practical Anatomy 7th ed. (1920) revised and edited by Arthur Robinson. (All images taken from Cunningham’s Manual of Practical Anatomy, 7th ed. housed at the Internet Archive and donated by the California Digital Library). HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a...
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Diagrams showing the trajectory of the major dives as performed at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. (All images taken from The Fifth Olympiad: the Official Report of the Olympic Games of Stockholm 1912 housed by the Internet Archive, donated by the University of Toronto). HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is...
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With the end of the 2012 Olympics now in sight, we celebrate the world of amateur sport with some photographs of local teams from yesteryear. (Images taken from a variety of sources via Flickr Commons. Click on each picture for more info and higher res versions). HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain...
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Pictures of the winners of each event of the Stockholm 1912 Olympic Games – as featured in the The Fifth Olympiad: the Official Report of the Olympic Games of Stockholm 1912, published in 1913 by Wahlstrom & Widstrand, Stockholm. (All images taken from The Fifth Olympiad: the Official Report of the Olympic Games of...
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Photographs taken during a square dance in McIntosh County in Oklahoma by photographers working for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA). The FSA and later the Office of War Information (OWI) between 1939 and 1944 made approximately 1,600 color photographs depicting life in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands....
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France in the Year 2000 (XXI century) – a series of futuristic pictures by Jean-Marc Côté and other artists issued in France in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1910. Originally in the form of paper cards enclosed in cigarette/cigar boxes and, later, as postcards, the images depicted the world as it was imagined to be...
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Series of photographs taken of Miss Ruth Kellogg demonstrating correct postures for various forms of housework. Photos taken by Troy for Delineator magazine. No date given, but Miss Kellogg was at Cornell 1921-26. (All images courtesy of the Div. Rare & Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library via Flickr). HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The...
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Selected pages from Shin-Bijutsukai, a Japanese Design Magazine, issues from 1901 and 1902. (All images extracted from the magazine via Internet Archive which you can also see in its wonderful entirety here in the PDR Texts collection). HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on...
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Images from a 1906 issue of the French women’s magazine Femina, the first of it’s kind in France and which is still going today. These strange array of pictures are from a competition in which the readers were asked to identify the famous female ‘artistes’ of the day obscured behind a bizarre variety of...
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Dazzle camouflage (also known as Razzle Dazzle or Dazzle painting) was a military camouflage paint scheme used on ships, extensively during World War I and to a lesser extent in World War II. The idea is credited to the artist Norman Wilkinson who was serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve when he had...
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Book illustrator and Irish stained glass artist Harry Clarke’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination: the first version of 1919 was restricted to monotone illustrations, while a second iteration with 8 colour plates and more than 24 monotone images was published in 1923. (Images via Wikimedia Commons) HELP TO KEEP...
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Images from The South pole; an account of the Norwegian Antarctic expedition in the “Fram,” 1910-1912, Roald Amundsen’s account of his expedition which became the first to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911, just five weeks ahead of a British party led by Robert Falcon Scott. Amundsen and his team returned safely...
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Happy Thanksgiving! The pictures below are from the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation, a ceremony that takes place at the White House every year at which The President of the United States is presented with a live turkey, usually of the Broad Breasted White variety. Since 1989, the first Thanksgiving of President George H. W....
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Happy halloween! Images from the New York Public Library Picture Collection. HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or...
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A selection of World War II aerial photographs collected from Wikimedia Commons, including the Allied bombing of Hamburg, scenes from Operation Market Garden, and views of Birkenau extermination camp in Poland. Each photograph links through to its Wikimedia Commons page where you will find more information on the image and higher resolution versions. HELP...
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Opened in 1894, the Field Columbian Museum was located in the Palace of Fine Arts building on the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition, and was made up of the artefacts from the anthropology, botany, geology and zoology collections from the Fair. (All images from The Field Museum Library via their Flickr Commons set...
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(All images via Wikimedia Commons) (All images from Wikimedia Commons) HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small...
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In the 1970′s the Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill with the help of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University held a series of space colony summer studies which explored the possibilities of humans living in giant orbiting spaceships. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed and a number of artistic renderings of the concepts...
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From 1913, John Alfred Charlton Deas, a former curator at Sunderland Museum, organised several handling sessions for the blind, first offering an invitation to the children from the Sunderland Council Blind School, to handle a few of the collections. They were so successful that Deas went on to develop and arrange a course of...
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In 1908 Dr Julius Neubronner patented a miniature pigeon camera activated by a timing mechanism. The invention brought him international notability after he presented it at international expositions in Dresden, Frankfurt and Paris in 1909–1911. Spectators in Dresden could watch the arrival of the camera-equipped carrier pigeons, and the photos were immediately developed and...
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These photographs of ‘spirits’ are taken from an album of photographs unearthed in a Lancashire second-hand and antiquarian bookshop by one of the Museum’s curators. They were taken by a controversial medium called William Hope (1863-1933). Born in 1863 in Crewe, Hope started his working life as a carpenter. In about 1905 he became...
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Operation Doorstep was a Civil Defense test carried out in conjunction with the much larger March 17, 1953, 16-kiloton ANNIE test conducted at the Nevada Test Site, part of Operation Upshot-Knothole. In the smaller Operation Doorstep test, blast and thermal effects were evaluated on mannequins, automobiles, and wooden frame houses.(Images from the National Nuclear...
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