In January of 1850 or 1851 (by a printer’s error, both dates appear), a magazine with the ambitious title The Photographic Art-Journal was launched, featuring a frontispiece engraving (there was no good way to reproduce a photograph directly) of the already-famous Mathew Brady. In the introductory essay, the editor, H. H. Snelling, laments that photography has been purely mechanical for most practitioners, but he predicts that the future will bring a mature understanding of photography as art.
Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts was one of the most influential men in the history of American culture. His New York Times obituary remembered that “To the general public Dr. Crafts was of course, best known for his attacks on popular amusements. Screen vampires, close dancing, ‘joy rides,’ which he said ‘often proved a ride of lifelong shame and woe’; Sunday baseball, cigarettes were a few of the objects of his tireless reforming zeal.” Shadowland was a trendy magazine with pretensions to up-to-date taste, as expressed in reviews of modernist literature and semi-nude portraits of movie stars. It was a everything Dr. Crafts deplored and a frequent target of his ire, so the editor invited him to write his opinions as an article.
With the exception of the flying machine, no invention was ever so breathlessly anticipated as television. Everyone knew it was coming, and everyone knew it would change the world. But how? This article, published in 1930, suggests that television will be made to pay its way by becoming another attraction in theaters.
In 1915, a book of instructions for the novice writer of moving-picture plays included this helpful advice on catering to the taste of the moviegoing public.
We’ll always need good draft horses, says a Canadian agricultural expert writing in 1921. Motorized farm equipment will never be of more than limited utility, and the horse will always have the economic advantage. It therefore behooves breeders to invest in the future by keeping up a good stock in the expectation of rising prices.
Slavery in the Roman Empire took many forms. Some slaves were domestics who were as good as part of the family, and might look forward to earning or being given their freedom by grateful masters. But many were industrial slaves, and their lives were miserable and short.