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An old hi-resolution colour photograph of London - circa 1930's?

en.wikipedia.org — I found this photo embedded in the Wikipedia article of London, without any comments or even a description. It is an old photo taken at Piccadilly Circus looking up Shaftsbury Avenue. This is a great photo - something that you don't see often as it is in colour! A great and interesting peek into the past.

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  • xoe26, on 10/12/2007, -1/+167I found this comment in the image talk page:

    "That photograph was taken by my father, Chalmers Butterfield. He left me many old Kodachromes, and after I acquired a Nikon film scanner and began transferring images to my computer, I thought I just had to share these with others, instead of just keeping them all boxed away in the closet. I hope you enjoyed it."
    • UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -39/+116If you look above the hood of the car on the left, you'll see a guy in a lighter brown suit pick-pocketing the guy next to him. Pretty smooth.
    • Yupp, on 10/12/2007, -34/+31Hey Experts, chime in. I am noticing at least one, maybe more, left hand drives on the cars. (the car on the right, facing camera) As you know, the English use a RH drive. Is this a recent development? Happy to be wrong here, just caught my eye.
    • Mesach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+80Looks to me like he is picking his own pocket... but he is invading the personal space of the other guy.
    • plingboot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6> I am noticing at least one, maybe more, left hand drives on the cars. (the car on
      > the right, facing camera)

      Not sure if that's a steering wheel, looks pretty high up. Could it be a strap of some kind?

      The car on the right pointing towards the right is a right hand drive as is the car to the left (check out his right hand side horn)
    • astatine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@yupp: I think it's an old Hackney Carriage (i.e. a taxi), which had a different configuration to most road cars - hence why it's the same model as the other cars in the foreground. Also note the little white plate on the rear-left of the car in the bottom right of the picture - that's probably the "taxi license plate".

      This website seems to identify them as Austin Low Loaders, although they're right-hand drive here:
      http://knowledgeoflondon.com/taxis.html

      There are some pictures of one here, and it looks like this one's right-hand drive so that passengers can load luggage to the left of the driver (ie. on the kerb side):
      http://www.cardatabase.net/search/search.php?model=Low%20Loader%20Taxi
    • watsina, on 10/12/2007, -9/+5Have u tried the licence no. BLN 531. It may be clue
    • watermelon, on 10/12/2007, -12/+8I am not sure of the validity of wikipedia articles (a constant reminder from school) but on a wikipedia article about Kodachrome... it seems as though color photography was possible during the mid 30's.

      link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome
    • MOJIRA, on 05/17/2008, -0/+20Seeing old places like this and the ones ones linked to below in color is really amazing.

      It really feels like you could be there versus something lost in time.
    • Thud, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27This photo had to be taken in the late 40's or early 50's.

      Look at the model of double-decker bus in the picture. As soon as I saw it, I said "bloody hell, that looks like an Ensignbus model RT1431!"

      (actually I just looked at the pictures of various buses in this online museum and found the closest match)

      http://www.ticketslondon-online.biz/TransportMuseum/Museum_RT1431.htm

      This bus was build from 1948-1950.

      The double-decker buses used in the 20's and 30's looked more like this:

      http://www.ticketslondon-online.biz/TransportMuseum/Museum_TD161.htm


    • admbws, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Color photography has existed for almost as long as photography itself. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography
    • dan4prez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+42Here is a photo taken from the same spot as the one in the story from August 2006:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Piccadilly-shaftesbury.jpg
    • Mesach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The vehicle with the supposed left hand drive does not look like a 20-30's car, more like a 40-50's car cant tell exact make and model as the front end is obscured, and with Thud's comparison of the double decker busses, I would be inclined to believe that this photo was taken in that same time frame.

      The car could be imported from another country thats why its a left hander, but they couldn't import it from the future.

      Impressive picture none the less
    • millixaw, on 10/12/2007, -26/+3What is this "colour" that you speak of? Is it anything related to the trait known as "color" ?
    • Mesach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Hey Milixaw, Read up and stop being such a dumbass

      American and British English spelling differences
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_differences

      And since this is a picture of London, its appropriate to use the British spelling
    • besprenbrian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So how did someone created this color photo? It is really cool? preserving a moment in history 60 years back and in color that's really something and who would have thought that this very old photo will be this popular not to mention it in on the internet!!!
    • zorgster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0There's several clues... Treasure Hunt started 14th Sept-ish at the Apollo... but it moved to the Globe on 23rd July 1950 ... Next door are Hammond and Clements .. right they are in films .. but not here... they're at the Lyric Theatre performing in George Farquhar's The Beaux Stratagem on the 26th Jan 1950... and to the right of the Apollo is the Globe .. in big red letters it says "Ring Round The Moon" which you can just make out... which began on 26th Jan 1950 also and starred one of the actresses from Treasure Hunt. In the alternative shot which was taken 10 minutes before (notice clock on right of shot this time is 20 to 1) you get to see more of the neon signs. So these shots were taken close together. My guess is the third shot of the bus stop was also taken within a short space of time if not the same day as these first two ... and in the back ground in the BusStop photo the trees and roads beneath are completely free of leaves ... it's a slightly chilly look to the place and people ... so I reckon these photos were taken somewhere between Nov 1949 and the end of Jan 1950.
  • xoe26, on 10/12/2007, -0/+53Wow - Also turns out this guy has uploaded quite a few old hi-res colour pics!
    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Sba2
    • dawgma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+44http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Leadville_%26_the_Hotel_Vendome_%2C_Colorado_%2C_1950s_%2C_Kodachrome_by_Chalmers_Butterfield.jpg

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Golden_Gate_Bridge_%2C_San_Francisco_%2C_1950s_%2C_Kodachrome_by_Chalmers_Butterfield.jpg

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Challenger_Inn%2C_(_Sun_Valley_Inn_)%2C_Idaho._Kodachrome_by_Chalmers_Butterfield.jpg

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Telluride%2C_downtown%2C_august_1979.jpg
    • Settra, on 10/12/2007, -23/+180This can't be real..I call fake.

      Everybody knows the 30's were in black and white.
    • UncleRic0, on 10/12/2007, -61/+16@Settra

      Actually, if you look up Kodachrome it says it came out in the mid 30's. From the Wikipedia article:

      "Kodachrome is a brand of color transparency (slide) film sold by Kodak. It was first sold as 16 mm movie film in 1935, and as 8 mm movie film and 135 film in 1936. Kodachrome is the oldest successfully mass-marketed color still film using a subtractive method..."
    • yoda133113, on 10/12/2007, -0/+44@ UncleRico
      Um... He was refering to the decade itself, not the film then, it was a joke. The 30s were in B&W, but maybe this guy was a visionary and saw the world in color before everyone else.
    • cduquette, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20Couldn't things like this be home made? Isn't it possible to make a "color" photograph by taking 3 b/w stills one with a green filter, one with a red filter, and another with a blue filter and then combining them later?
    • clocky, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Looking at the dates of the other photos that were contributed to Wikipedia, I'd hazard a guess that the London photo dates to the 50's instead... still a fantastic find, nonetheless.
    • xgravix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+34cduquette: yes, the people in the photos stood still long enough for him to take a photo, change the filter, take a photo, change the filter, and take another photo.

      Hahaha. no. You could do that for landscapes or people standing still, but not shots like these.
    • bishop1847, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Actually, there have been color prints since right around the turn of the century. Somewhere on the Library of Congress' website there are photographs of mostly eastern European origin that are in color. The process was (I think) to take 3 slides - red, green, and blue (duh), and superimpose them on each other as channels.

      I just wish I could find those photographs again...
    • thomash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20"Color film was non-existent in 1909 Russia, yet in that year a photographer named Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii embarked on a photographic survey of his homeland and captured hundreds of photos in full, vivid color. His photographic plates were black and white, but he had developed an ingenious photographic technique which allowed him to use them to produce accurate color images."

      http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=245

      very interesting. I think it was on digg some time ago.

      Thomas

    • JamesWilson, on 10/12/2007, -3/+33In the same vane:

      There's no way this photograph is from the 1930s, Wikipedia clearly states it was uploaded on "03:58, 6 August 2006"

      God. Such noobs. :)
    • dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ thomash & cduquette

      Yeah the Russian colour photographs (mentioned here on digg several times) from the early 1900's I think were made with three colour filters, but they were only slides and had to be projected using filters not printed on paper, since the technology didn't exist.
  • gregmo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+118This is one of the coolest finds ive seen in a long time. As a 20 year old its hard for me to imagine the 1930s without thinking black-and-white. Hell, even in the 60s and 70s I think faded color because its all that ive seen in movies and pictures. To see the 30s, 40s and 50s in full, rich color is facinating to me
    • blapierre, on 10/12/2007, -23/+48The 1930's WERE in black and white.
    • zybch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+62Great find. This type of thing is why the net is so important.
      Without it, 'artifacts' like these would just sit in musty boxes mouldering quietly away and be lost forever.
    • hannasdeli, on 10/12/2007, -9/+34Well, I might be quite wrong... but this picture can't be from the 30's.

      If you zoom in to the red double decker bus in the right side of the image there is a quite more modern car... maybe from the 40's o even later. It is located between the red light and that bus.

      Still, it is an amazing picture... but probably not that old.
    • PhantomZmoove, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16Why is this guy being dug down? He is totally right, just look at that car, easily mid 40s design.

      Still, great photo.

    • ntegrated, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2my thoughts, gregmo.
    • rumor, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7@hannasdeli

      you're wrong.

      that is a 30's car.
    • Wisgary, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19You're right, that's the first thing I thought "Holy ***** I keep forgetting people in the 30's didn't see things in black and white". TV and movies really shape our perception of life.
    • joshk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16I completely agree. The History Channel had a special a few years back showing WWII in color, and it seemed weird to me. I was so used to seeing it in B&W that seeing it in color made it look very interesting.
    • ludwik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokudin-Gorskii
    • suldar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+34@hannasdeli

      Not sure if this is accurate but the photo might be from c. 1949.

      If you zoom in on the Apollo theater it says "Treasure Hunt" is playing. According to the website below it was a comedy from c. 1949.

      http://library.kent.ac.uk/library/special/Programmes/APOLLO.HTM
    • suldar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Oops... Looks like hiro and others already noticed this. I just now saw there comments further down.
  • jaypmcdonald, on 10/12/2007, -2/+31Exactly, if anyone else has stuff like this, lets keep it coming.
  • tokyopimp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Awesome, yes it's always cool to see a picture, or video of an era when color video or pictures weren't around.

    It makes the entire picture even more intriguing. It's almost as if it has been embedded in our minds, black and white... so we assume that it is old, before color photos. But when we see the same thing in color, it makes us (at least me personally) look at the photo more in depth.
    • trieste, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is 1949. There was plenty of colour around then. Gone with the Wind and Snow White were made 10 years earlier. Kodachrome was still quite expensive though.
  • earthtoandy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29Absolutely stunning. Its so surreal, almost looks like we are looking at a movie set cause its unusual to see such color from the time period
    • rompom7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9My thoughts, especially seeing the advertisements, etc.
  • flak9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes, keep them coming. This is very interesting stuff, look at how pure the photos look. It's not very often you see them like this! I digg.
  • ufia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+54These old 1930 pictures have better resolution than my new digital camera I bought last year. Our generation is *****.
    • earthtoandy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+34The scarier Idea is that we are the first generation to effectively not record anything. Small written record, most is online. Few printed pictures, all temporarily on some hard drive or dvd. Anthropologists will have to be data recovery experts or they will know little about us :/
    • exabytes18, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14I myself was surprised at how high resolution it is, especially compared to my own digital camera. The reason why our generation is not screwed, however, is that the same technology used to take that picture ~75 years ago is still around today. Film.
    • avatarpalin, on 10/12/2007, -20/+5And i wonder if they spoke like that in the 1930's or are you using your language to demonstrate other aspects about modern society that have also deteriorated.
    • earthtoandy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3Our Generation is rubbish?

      Well, its at least more topical.
    • DirtyH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23Old analog cameras dont have something like resolution!
      Thats why its called analog.

      But you can scan it in as high res as you want,
      if you have a good scanner.

      And look at that pictures, its nice, but totally unsharp
      if you look closer.
    • golgotha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15"Anthropologists will have to be data recovery experts or they will know little about us :/"

      Actually, I think it will the opposite. We are the first generation to store large amounts of data digitally. This information will be transferred to newer media as it becomes available. Our digital data will not deteriorate over time and will be available for centuries to come.

      Think of it; we will be the pioneers of digital photography.
    • tybris, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6We record everything and copy it millions of times across the globe. Archeologists won't even be needed in the future..
    • johnlancia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@exabytes18

      Film has the equivalent of around 25 megapixels. A much better range than most digital camera's available just now. If you want the best resolution possible, you still have to go old school.

      And no, I use digital. It's cheaper and easier.
    • fogster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3They actually make digital cameras that exceed the resolution of film, but they're still insanely expensive. FWIW, the cameras are built on medium-format camera bodies, and use huge 20+ MP sensors on them. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/aptus-75.shtml is a review of a couple of them. You can 'scan' the film at whatever resolution, but normal 35mm film doesn't capture any more detail beyond 20ish MP: it has to do with the grain of the film.
    • chrisdelta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The megapixel-equivalent of film depends on it's ISO. It's not fixed at 25 megapixels.
    • CiXeL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ earthtoandy

      if we ever get a major major solar flare or some sort of RF interference from space or a nuclear war it will wipe ALL our magnetic records.
    • mackadoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"This information will be transferred to newer media as it becomes available. Our digital data will not deteriorate over time and will be available for centuries to come."

      Just like the hi-res videos of the moon landing!
  • Shorties, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I am loving this, It looks so real, its like a window into the 30s I don't think I have ever seen a color photograph from the 30s in such good condition. Oh and the resolution is huge! Perfect for wallpapers!
    • zybch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Seems like the photo scanner did a little bit of interpolation though :(
      Its especially visible if you zoom into the yellow writing on top of the 'MONICO' sign in the London picture.
  • mikeplokta, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17That's not the 1930s. The buses are Routemasters, introduced in 1956. Looks like the late 50s to me.
    • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Hmmm.. a wiki-lie?
    • fritzbrown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Actually, the color scheme seems to resemble that of the Leyland Titan which was in use throughout the 1930's and 40's.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyland_Titan
    • wyrdness, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I was just going to post the same thing. Definitely 1950's routemaster busses.
    • wyrdness, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Aaargh. I was wrong about the routemaster. The bus actually looks more like a late 40's RTL, which would tie up with the comment below about the show running in 1949.
      http://www.countrybus.org.uk/RT/RTL.htm
    • Arbus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I can see the names "Kay Hammond" and "John Clements" in one of the signs. They were in a movie together in 1948 according to IMDB. They married in 1946. It's hard to tell if they worked together before then.
    • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6If you look at the image licensing info, it's believed to be 1948-1949 by the author.

      I don't think "1930" was a wiki-lie, actually I'm not sure who came up with *that* date. I don't see it on Wikipedia.
    • johnlancia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No, its their own particular wikiality.
  • aywwts4, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Cars looked so much nicer back then.
  • lofiboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+33A CIGARETTE AD!?

    Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!?

    Awesome picture. :)
    • PhantomZmoove, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You know, for all those smoking advertisements in the photo...I can't see one person with a cigarette. lol
    • kafka47, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Don't worry! We'll just get Spielburg to replace it with a walkie-talkie ad.
    • noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@PhantomZmoove; Britain was almost financially wiped out by WWII. In addition (believe it or not), there was still rationing in place until as late as 1954 (in fact, it became stricter after the war).

      I don't know what the situation was with cigarettes in the late 1940s, but I'd assume that whilst people would have commonly smoked and "had" to have had them, they might not have been *that* abundant. This is just a guess, though.

      More info...
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom_during_and_after_World_War_II
    • igyigyigy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@PhantomZmoove
      (The ads were less effective then :))
  • fixed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There are a lot of old negatives being bought on eBay, I've always wondered if those will be over time put on the web for others to see. It would be incredible to see these mostly unmarked slides and negatives people buy go up on to Wikipedia for others to discern their age and contents. Imagine!
  • omniatlas, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4COLOR PICTURES from 1909 .. these pictures have been on digg many times:

    http://www.damninteresting.com

    • lofiboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2They still aren't as high resolution as these pictures
    • maximinus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's interesting how good the colour is, and how much difference it makes when people move while it's being taken. Look at http://shrunklink.com/?ikh for example - at the left, where people obviously moved away, and everywhere there are people, there are differently coloured 'halos' around them.
  • TylerLavite, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/London_%2C_Kodachrome_by_Chalmers_Butterfield.jpg

    view it full screen make it as big as passable and look at the bottom edges they are weird looking kind of like it is an old picture like its worn and has been scanned into the computer. but I'm pretty shire the 30's where black and white but i dont know
    • fixed, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4yes, as you stated: you don't know. do some research on kodachrome film technology, it came out in the mid 30's.
    • SpoBo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1well offcourse it has been scanned into a computer. How else did you think you'd be able to get it via the internet?

      That guy's pictures rock by the way. The one linked here is my background .. so awesome to look at. And he uploaded a picture from Bora Bora .. wow now that is some blue water. Amazing.
  • wyrdness, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28It's taken at Piccadilly Circus, looking down Shaftsbury Avenue.
    The closest modern image I can find on Google Images is this:
    http://bobsroutemasterpage.fotopic.net/p28957734.html
    'GAP' is approximately where 'Wills's Goldflake Cigarettes' was.

    If I had time today (which unfortunately I don't, and it's raining here in London), I'd go down there with my new Nikon D50 and try to take a photo from the same vantage point.
    • lcarsdeveloper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Even the original street lamps are still there!
      It's a bit of a shame that that beautiful old building has been covered up with a giant "TDK/Sanyo" signs, and that when you search for "Picadilly Circus" in Google Images, most of the photos people have taken were of the giant neon signs rather than the buildings.
    • monototo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3nice find. notice how the large dome topped building in the background looks very white in the old photo and very green in that google image. I wonder if this is the result of pollution? :/
    • radial, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1oh please do and post here. that would def be awesome to compare.
    • boxy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21Just popped when the rain stopped for a few mins and got a photo from a similar position, have added it to the wiki, see here:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Piccadilly-shaftesbury.jpg
    • mapkinase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1'GAP' is approximately where 'Wills's Goldflake Cigarettes' was.

      .. and News Theatre and Jewellers store
    • Nuhaus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks Boxy, very cool to see the distant background buildings that haven't changed.
    • radial, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thank you so much boxy!!!!!
  • NightRush, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Great photo, looks busy as all hell. My how we have changed...
  • oxygenuk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1wow thats a cool photo
  • hiro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+76The photo was taken in 1949. Among several things that date it (vehicles already being correctly mentioned) the clincher is the play at the Apollo theatre which only ran for 11 months. Still a great photo, but not 1930s I'm afraid
    • wyrdness, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Google shows 'Treasure Hunt' at the Apollo Theatre circa 1949. You're right. Digg this guy up!
    • scottylist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Treasure Hunt @ Apollo Theatre circa 1949: http://library.kent.ac.uk/library/special/Programmes/APOLLO.HTM
    • maximinus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Well spotted, and note that the photo on Wikipedia doesn't give a date - it's the digger who titled it who said that it *might* be from the '30s (as indicated by the question mark). I don't know why everybody seems to think that they're being lied to, since the digger didn't even say that it definitively was the '30s - just that it might be.
    • lcarsdeveloper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Perhaps the point of posting it on digg was to find out when it was taken?
    • applemaggot, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2It appears to be WWII or post era to me. The autos that dominate the image look to be Taxi's. They have luggage racks on top. Taxi cabs to this day tend to look/be 10 to 15 years older than the contemporary designs of the day. I don't think Britain introduced a lot of new autos between 1938 and 1946. Just a hunch but I think they may have spent their time working on say maybe the Rolls Royce Merlin engine or maybe that Radar thing.
    • BG06, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5http://www.collectorspost.com/cgi-bin/ShopLoader.cgi?Actors/milo_o'shea.html

      This confirms that it was indeed 1949.
    • BG06, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5Sorry, don't what happened there - here it is again...


      http://www.collectorspost.com/cgi-bin/ShopLoader.cgi?Actors/milo_o'shea.html
  • dagr8tim, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5To all the people who are calling fake. There was a dig article awhile back about french color photo's from World War 1 (1916). I wish I could find the link. Amazing photo's, I downloaded all like 83 megs of them.
  • captainDig, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Yup it's late fifties. There are plenty of clues; the buses as many people have mentioned (only just phased out) and the lack of hats on the men etc...
  • sephie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+32Those saying that this would have been technologically impossible are wrong. Colour photos exist from the 1890s onward. Prokudin-Gorski, for instance, spent years taking high-definition colour photographs of the Russian empire from the 1890s onward. The technique he used was to photograph the same scene three times, using red, green and blue filters.

    You can view the pictures here:
    http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/chronology.html

    View of a mosque (1911):
    http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/images/p87-8052.jpg
    St Petersburg (1910):
    http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/images/p87-6040-th.jpg
    Tobolsk (1912):
    http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/images/p87_4507__00755_-th.jpg
    Peasant Girls (1909):
    http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/images/p87-5251-th.jpg
    • maximinus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Why have people been digging this comment down? It's stating a fact, giving credibility to the original digg and providing some great links.
    • SuperCheese, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2That's cool - but it wouldn't have worked for this picture. Think about it - all of the people walking around, cars driving, etc. Things have to remain still for a long enough time for you to take three shots with different filters.

      Interesting technique, but it wasn't done here.
  • zidooo, on 10/12/2007, -15/+6Comment from bosnia :) London rokz
    • lcarsdeveloper, on 10/12/2007, -15/+5Comment to bosnia :) You don't need to tell us where you're commenting from...
    • tybris, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Good for you, say hello to the Dutch UN forces over there.
  • Wisgary, on 10/12/2007, -15/+3Wow, people were SO original with their clothing back then. Seriously, they look like low-budget videogame models. They come in 3 colors, black brown and gray. I wonder what they'd think if an emo troop started walking around the place. SATAN.
    • hiro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14This was only 4 yrs after the war ended, rationing was still in place and there wasn't a lot of money about. People will probably look back at pictures of us in 50 yrs time and laugh at what we're wearing!
    • skatingrox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Actually, if they looked at the teenage female population, they'd laugh at what we WEREN'T wearing.
  • tnitty, on 10/12/2007, -14/+5Wow, what a ***** circus...There's no animals or clowns! What a ripoff!
  • tnitty, on 10/12/2007, -10/+0Schwing!
  • PradaPete, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0always consider it could be CGI or from a movie set. I doubt they had TV sets in 1930
  • xdj4, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9that model of DOUBLE DECKER were first produced in 1947, its a "Routemaster"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routemaster

    I looked at the photo, look to new for the 30's, started with the most obvious, the trademark DOUBLE DECKER google & wiki are your friend
    • noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Someone mentioned elsewhere in the thread that it's not a (1950s onwards) Routemaster, but an earlier late-1940s model. Looks similar, though; that's why I was extremely sceptical about the image belonging to the 1930s when I saw it, and I was almost right.
  • xdj4, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1that model of DOUBLE DECKER were first produced in 1947, its a "Routemaster"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routemaster

    I looked at the photo, look to new for the 30's, started with the most obvious, the trademark DOUBLE DECKER google & wiki are your friend
  • wheel, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4The photo HAS to be after August 20th, 1934. Eros News Theatre opened that date, which is pictured in the photo.

    http://cinematreasures.org/theater/13073/
    • SuperCheese, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I can one-up that, and even simpler. It's a kodachrome picture - which wasn't sold until 1935.
    • joeydoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1***** Gap!!
      Got to be gutting everything to flog their *****
  • barathron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I think many of you need to rethink your use of the term "high definition". Though it is a popular buzzword these days it does not apply to this picture at all. It is decidedly low definition. It has been scanned in at a high resolution but this does not improve the quality of the original film print scanned in nor does it make it "high defintion".

    Kudos and massive diggs to user Hiro for spotting and dating "Treasure Hunt" at the Apollo. I think that confirms circa 1949.
  • tedcoffel, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2I hate to geek out here too much, but I'm pretty sure those are routemaster buses, which were first produced in 1954 and only came into service in 1956.
  • astatine, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Oops, post in error, ignore this.
  • Slagar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I love this photo, but looking at it makes me feel a little sad. Most of those people in the picture are so youthful and full of life, same with the environment around them. I know though that just about every single one of those people are now gone, the buildings are aged, and the plentiful lights are all burned out and buried in some landfill. Then I think of sometime 70 years or so from now, when that generation will look at our photos in the same way we are looking at these. I don't think an old black and white photo has ever conveyed that same sense of scale to me.
    • dagonweb, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5A substantial percentage of the people alive today may, if we give a damn, be alive in centuries. This generation can see the end of death. Not all of it mind you, and not perpetually. But as centuries progress from now on death may become as quaint and archaic as that picture. History.

      And it will be remembered as The Great Horror.
    • noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@dagonweb; I'm not convinced about that "seeing the end of death" thing- infinity defeats everyone in the end. Chances are that if technology keeps developing at the rate it's developing now, we may be at a point in the next few hundred (if not less than one hundred) years where humans and the nature of humanity has advanced so far that it's futile to speculate on what might happen. It's probable that even if "I" or "you" are part of that, it'll be debatable if we're the same person; what if our brains have been augmented? What if our communications with others became so closely linked that we almost became a part of the other person? (That latter one is IMHO not a good idea; regardless of how much people might think they want intimacy, I think it will become rapidly apparent that knowing someone else's mind to that extent would be deeply unpleasant).

      But to get to a more managable level.... I realised that for some time now, I've been planning my life on the basis that I'm likely to live a lot longer than previous generations; i.e. well past my 100th birthday. That having been said, I'll take quality over quantity of life any day.

      And to get even more mundane, and back to what you were saying, another "strange" thought; the very old and wizened people who are still (just) alive today may once have been very attractive and sexual beings. That might gross some people out, but it's the illusion (particularly amongst the young) that the old were never young, or more particularly, never their age. Yes they were, and even when you "know" it logically, it doesn't always hit home.
    • toomuchcoffee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They are "gone" only if you believe that you are sweeping through time. An alternate view is that the universe is a kind of static 4d block, and time doesn't flow. You just have the illusion of being at a particular point in time. Actually, if the usual "flowing" view of time is accurate, it contradicts Special Relativity, which is why Einstein and many others believe(d) in the block view.

      http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/
  • Wartyboskfapped, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9It's not that old. It's definitely after WW2, because of the relative lack of hats on passers-by (I'll dig anyone's post in reply to this who answers WHY that is significant).

    My granny, who still lives & is mentally very fresh, was born in 1923, so anything within that timescale to me isn't truly *old*. I know that a lot of people here can't remember PONG being introduced and regard people in their 50s as ancient, but personally I think anything within living memory isn't really 'old'. Try over a century!
    • Shorties, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"It's not that old. It's definitely after WW2, because of the relative lack of hats on passers-by (I'll dig anyone's post in reply to this who answers WHY that is significant)."

      Rationing?
    • Wartyboskfapped, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2correctamundo! Rationing put paid to much of the fashion for hats. Although they didn't truly finally die out until the late 50s/60s.
    • annonimality, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Look at Hiro's post. This picture is definitely from 1949.
  • dagonweb, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3I can imagine standing there. It terrifies me being there, back in time, in the 1930s. It is a horribly primitive age.
    • Wartyboskfapped, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Once you've travelled back in time a few times, that feeling fades. ;)
    • midlifecrisis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2@dagonweb

      Scary, isn't it? The food alone: no preservatives, no articificial coloring, no monosodium glutamat, no BSE - I wonder how that must have tasted.

      @all

      Would anyone care to comment on the lighting in the image? There doesn't seem to be direct sunlight (look at the soft shadows of the cars) but then there are those strong reflections on the cars' bodies. Could this be a still from a movie setup?

    • Wartyboskfapped, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Dude, they had preservatives. By 1930 chemical preservatives were well & truly being used in a big way, but the first preservatives were probably sugar, salt & the process of pickling, which are thousands of years old. Canning & bottling started properly in around 1830. They had had artificial colouring for ages! They had plastics, such as bakelite. Rayon was invented in the early 1900s. Nylon was invented in 1938. Polyester 1941, etc. Monosodium Glutamate is a natural chemical that's in a lot of food, but it was first isolated in 1907!

      As for the lighting in the photo, it looks pretty normal to me. It's not all that dark there, and the view is deceptive.
    • midlifecrisis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"By 1930 chemical preservatives were well & truly being used in a big way, but the first preservatives were probably sugar, salt & the process of pickling, which are thousands of years old."

      I know that but I'm still pretty convinced that food then was quite unlike the chemical bombs we have today.
    • suomi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"I can imagine standing there. It terrifies me being there, back in time, in the 1930s. It is a horribly primitive age."

      I have to ask - and I have been stung in this way before, but - are you being serious?
  • lofiboy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3The year is 1953, this banner says so.

    http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/7972/1953vz9.jpg
    • trieste, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Could be open since 1853. It could be a price, I cannot read it clearly.

      Most evidence supports 1949.
  • mikebeauchamp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Incase nobody has said it yet, that is an 18MP image.

    • trieste, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thank you for multiplying 5119x3606.

      "An old hi-resolution colour photograph of London"
  • balinx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20I found another image of the same place on wikipedia, this time from 1896:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Piccadillycircusshaftesbury1896.gif

    - James
  • scottylist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I can't find Waldo...
    • joeydoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's London, I think you mean Wally.
  • balinx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5and one from the 60s

    http://www.sixtiescity.com/Culture/Images/piccadilly.jpg

    cool woodcut showing the tube lines underneath that area:

    http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7069/ltpicc.gif

  • KenMo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6I blame Bush
  • tybris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Those old Londoners sure enjoyed a smoke.
  • Lilbrittle, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Yeah wtf they didnt have any Color back in the 30's they were black and white...This is a fake photo...Imma sue someone newbs!
  • michir, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4if you'd take a look at the wikipedia-article where this pic is used (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London) you'll see the legend of the pic is "London, 1949"

    so it might not be taken in the 1930's
  • mcic1984, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Yes, I know the picture is scanned -- but even when you zoom into see the full 5119x3606 pixels of that, the picture is still quite clear (not entirely, but still...).

    That's quite amazing, because 5 119 x 3 606 = 18 459 114 - i.e. that's around 18 MEGAPIXELS (eighteen megapixels)!

    We've a long way to go with our digital cameras!!
    • overand, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4http://www.hasselblad.se/ - they've got a 39 megapixel camera, but with that photo, it's not as if each 'pixel' is real, or represents a single valid point of grain on the photo. I'd say that my 3.4 megapixel dSLR reproduces images with much more detail than this photo, but it's still nice.
  • Makurosu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm always impressed with how high resolution these old photos are. I recently got a box of old family photos that date back to the 1920's, and I've been scanning them in at around 600 dpi. It's incredible how high resolution these little 2" photos were. I can zoom in and see the titles on books, the expressions on faces in the background, etc. Then I scan in photos taken in the 1970's with those cheap 110 cameras and flash cubes and the resolution is terrible. It's kind of interesting for me.
  • zqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15I was born in 1949, in 1952 my family went to Africa, we came back to London for a visit in 1954 and in my childs minds eye I can still remember people being dressed this way and the traffic looking like this, because Africa was so different. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the activity and how important everyone looked in their English suits.
  • dannykeithjames, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Excellent find! Thanks to xoe26.
  • martin77, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm pretty sure that the Bank underneath the
    Craven A sign became the site of one of Londons
    first ever Wendys Hamburger restaurants. It
    was always a good reason to head to Piccadilly.
    Sadly like that bank Wendys has gone too...
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