1907 Ernest-Louis Lessieux, Tatiana in a bathing suit on a beach in Oléron, Autochrome glass plate.
The Autochrome Lumière was an early color photography process patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907 the year these photographs were taken. (x)
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February 9, 1942: The French ocean liner Normandie, docked beside pier 88 in Manhattan, NYC, catches fire while being converted into the troopship USS Lafayette. A pile of highly flammable kapok life preservers were improperly stored near a working acetylene torch in the ship's grand salon, and a stray spark caused a blaze quickly got out of control. The ship's onboard telephone system had been disabled days prior along with most of the ship's advanced fire suppression system, and the sprinkler system was improperly activated at all of its control stations simultaneously, dropping the water pressure within it to useless levels. It took twelve minutes for the NY Fire Department to respond to the emergency, by which time the fire had been fanned by a strong wind to become an inferno sweeping through the Normandie's upper decks, and 2,000 Navy men and civilians working aboard were streaming out of the ship through a limited number of entry points, preventing firefighters from getting aboard the vessel. When they finally could get aboard, they found their hoses incompatible with the firefighting inlets on the French ship, meaning they could only fight the fire from outside the ship.
For several hours firetrucks on land shot water on the Normandie's starboard landside while fireboats poured water onto the Normandie's seaward port side, but the fireboats poured significantly more water into the giant ship than the trucks did, causing an imbalance of water in the ship's upper decks and a dangerous list to port. The Normandie's designer Vladimir Yourkevitch was in NYC, and when he heard his ship was on fire he rushed to the site and begged to be let aboard so he could open the . "I designed the ship!" he said, "I can find my way through it with my eyes closed! I'll open the sea-cocks [valves], the ship's belly will fill with water, the ship will sink six inches and settle on the bottom, and it will be safe!" The Navy administrators at the conversion site were unmoved. "This is a Navy job," they said brusquely.
By evening the fire had been brought under control, but the ship was listing about thirty degrees to its seaward side. Thinking the Normandie no longer in danger, the Navy and Fire Department abandoned the ship for the night, not realizing only the ship's mooring ropes were keeping it from capsizing. In the night the ropes snapped, and the ship rolled over onto its side, wallowing in the mud at the bottom of the river. There the ship lay for eighteen months, no one sure what to do with the wreck.
In August 1943 it was decided to raise the ship and convert it into an aircraft carrier. The superstructure was cut away and then the hull was pumped free of water, and it slowly emerged from the river and returned to an even keel. But it was found the fire had damaged the hull too severely and the ship's machinery had deteriorated too much for the ship to be of further use. The hulk sat idly until the end of the war, when it was decided to scrap it after both the US Navy and the French Line expressed no interest in salvaging the ship. The remains of the Normandie were scrapped in Newark, New Jersey in 1946.
Photo taken by Harry Warnecke for the New York Daily News. It is unclear if this photo is a real color photo or a digital colorization. I found this photo on a Facebook group dedicated to the Normandie claiming the color photo is real. This photo has been published before only in black-and-white, and Getty Images features the photo in B&W, but Getty's version of the photo is slightly cropped on the right edge compared to the color photo (look closely and you'll see the space between the second funnel and the right edge of the photo is wider in the color image), meaning Getty's version of the photo is not necessarily from the original negatives, but could be an early reproduction. Interestingly, Harry Warnecke actually owned a color film studio and took color press photos of celebrities for the NY Daily News during this time period, so it's indeed possible that this is a genuine color photo. If anyone can provide any information one way or the other, I would be quite grateful.
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Maxwell St. scene, Labor Day, Chicago, 1950 - Andreas Feininger
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Autochrome Lumière, The World's Earliest Color Film
Way before Kodachrome, and the now-classic Paul Simon song, there was Autochrome Lumière.
Autochrome Lumière is a photographic process that revolutionized color photography in the early 20th century. It was invented by French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, who were already famous for their contributions to the film industry.
Before Autochrome Lumière, color photography was a difficult and…
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Clifton R. Adams ~ A woman sitting on the edge of a sea wall at a harbor in Tampa, Florida, ca. 1930 (Autochrome) | src Nat Geo
The image was published with the article Florida—The Fountain of Youth (National Geographic, 1930)
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Broadway & Park Row, once known as Newspaper Row due to the buildings housing the city's newspapers, ca. 1920. This seems to be an autochrome, although the library doesn't identify it as such. Enlarge this by clicking or tapping; it's a big image with a lot of detail.
Photo: NYPL
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