William O. Owen in 1898, his climbing partners John Shive, Franklin Spalding, and Frank Petersen are depicted on top of Grand Teton.

 

view of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction, San Francisco, California, circa 1935.

 

Gustav Stresemann, German foreign minister

3 Oct 1929, Gustav Stresemann, German foreign minister 1923-1929 during Weimar Republic, died, aged 51. French foreign minister Aristide Briand, awarded Nobel Prize for Peace in 1926 for the policy of reconciliation & negotiation. What might have happened if he’d lived in the 1930s?

 

Max von Baden

3 Oct 1918, Max von Baden (1867-1929), prince, general & politician, appointed German Chancellor. Had worked for POWs welfare & opposed unrestricted submarine warfare. Sued for peace on Germany's behalf, approved Kaiser's removal & transferred power to SPD’s Friedrich Ebert. 

Indian PM Lal Bahadur Shastri arrived at Tashkent for peace talks with Pakistan mediated by the USSR.

In January 1966, Indian PM Lal Bahadur Shastri arrived at Tashkent for peace talks with Pakistan mediated by the USSR. Tashkent in January was brutally cold. Shastri Ji only had his khadi woolen coat with him as a warm garment. Soviet premier Alexei Kosigyn observed this and felt that the Indian PM must be uncomfortable in the extreme cold. He ordered a Russian overcoat to be gifted to Shastri ji. At a formal function, he presented the coat to Shastri Ji as a mark of respect. Next day, Kosigyn noted Shastri ji was still wearing his khadi coat. A bit perplexed, he asked the prime minister what happened during a break in official events. Kosigyn was worried that Shastri Ji hadn't liked the present.

 

Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral rally . Delhi, 1948.

Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral rally. Delhi, 1948. If someone asks who was Gandhi and what was his contribution to the Freedom Struggle, show them this.

The Crowd and welcome for Nehru in US, Russia and UK. No massive PR, No wastage of public money, No ‘Go back Nerhu, Hitler Nehru protests

 

Once upon a time Giants Mascot Willie Breslin had a Couple of baseball cards.

 

African history - Chief Abushiri

 

workers on the catwalks bundling the cables during the construction of the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California, circa 1936

 

Winter view down Monastery St. 1939

 

The Three Tetons as seen from west of the Teton Range by members of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1872.

The Three Tetons as seen from west of the Teton Range by members of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1872. One of the earliest photographs of the Teton Range taken by William Henry Jackson in 1872.

 

Washington Street, between Dover and Dwight Streets, traffic below elevated rail by MIT-Libraries,

 

Washington St in Hoboken looking north - 1942

 

MAKING THE DREAM COME TRUE

MAKING THE DREAM COME TRUE Vladimir Zworykin and Isaac Shoenberg work to perfect all-electronic television. 

Saturday, January 30, 1937 was a sad day for Scottish television pioneer John Logie Baird. That was when the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) finally abandoned its mechanical television system, with its whirring wheels and messy chemicals. He had come a long way since his first experiments with television in 1923, but it wasn’t far enough. His dream was over. The future was electronic. Three months earlier, on November 2, 1936, the BBC had started the world’s first regular, high definition, public television broadcasting service. In alternate weeks it used two different sets of equipment. 

The idea was to test two rival systems. One was Baird’s; the other had been created by a team at Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI) led by Russian-born engineer Isaac Shoenberg. The all-electronic EMI system won easily. Its pictures were sharper, its cameras were more mobile, it was more reliable, and it cost less. In all but detail, it was the system we use today. Shoenberg’s team had been formed five years earlier. They had worked with remarkable speed, but they weren’t the first to research all-electronic television. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, a lone pioneer, Philo T. Farnsworth, had started work on his electronic “image dissector” in 1926. He gave the first demonstration of all-electronic television in 1934. Unfortunately, his cameras needed too much light, and his work came to a dead end. Electronic eye the strange shape of the Emitron camera reflected the shape of the image tube inside it. 

The drooping nose held the tube’s electron gun. Above this were two lenses, one of which was a viewfinder. Pictures from Pinning disc Baird did much to create interest in television. He used a rotating disc to sweep a spotlight over the subject to be televised, with a matching disc in the receiver. This mechanical system could not make pictures good enough to compete with electronics.