Two adverts from the Central Electricity Generating Board’s campaign in the early 1960s highlighting the necessity of electricity pylons (for Americans: transmission towers).
Via Moa K. Carlsson on Twitter, who notes explicitly their relevance in an era when pylon construction is once again needed as the grid is reconfigured from centralised coal, oil, and gas plants to wind, solar, and other, more distributed, renewable energy sources.
Pylon of the Month also reposted one of these adverts in August this year, and has more details on both the need for these changes, and the backlash against them.
This advert is a great image, but the copy around the original (as seen in this example from Country Life) also seems worth posting:
“Most people want the comfort of modern amenities - but few like the towers that bring the power to work them.”
Also of note: the caption of a version of this advert in a 2013 issue of Gridlines, the magazine of the CEGB’s post-privatisation successor National Grid:
“While this ad may appear old-fashioned in its views, in the context of the 1960s, the flood of new household appliances was seen as liberating housewives. While just 3 per cent of households had washing machines in 1945, the figure rose to 58 per cent by 1965.”
This is Stanley Green, whose sign (and 36 of the 84 (!) versions of his booklet) are in the Museum of London’s collection.
This is a photo from their old location, taken in 2018. Sadly, the museum is closed for a few years as they move to a new building once used by the Smithfield meat market (which might make displaying this somewhat ironic), but there is an article by curator Cathy Ross if you’re interested in Green’s story, or theories.
ps nice to see an old Routemaster serving route 8 to Old Ford in the background
I recently came across this photograph by Berenice Abbott, captioned
[Portrait of an unknown woman, New York City], April 4, 1942, four gelatin silver prints mounted to board, made with Supersight camera. Berenice Abbott Archive, The Image Centre (AG04.2012.2010:0065)
I wondered what the Supersight camera was, and quickly found Anna Craycroft’s article on the subject. If I understand the description correctly, Abbott’s camera was a mix of a lightbox and a camera obscura, enabling large (16" × 20") negatives to be taken of smaller subjects, like wings.
Abbott did write up a patent application for the camera, sometimes referred to with a space as Super Sight, but it was never submitted, and “only one person—Hank O’Neal, a friend of Abbott’s and also a photographer—was confident enough in his understanding of the technique to explain it”.
As Craycroft writes elsewhere in the essay,
Abbott’s work crossed boundaries, broke rules, and created new forms. Through her passion for photography she acted as a historian, archivist, curator, inventor, educator, author, and activist. Each accomplishment was born of necessity in her service and dedication to photography.
Abbott’s cityscapes are well known, but these macro photographs - and their techniques - deserve some of the spotlight too. I’m happy to have run across them.
“A sign over Interstate 80 reads: ‘Eyes on the road not the sky, drive safely’ prior to an annular eclipse in Winnemucca, Nevada” from the Guardian’s photos of Saturday, 14 October’s annular eclipse.
Photo by Bill Owyang, Public Utilities Commission Photographer.
Sadly, the 76X, the successor line, has not been reinstated after it suspension in early 2020, so it’s not currently possible to take a weekend visit to the Marin headlands by public transport alone. It might well be the last route brought back, but I really hope it makes it at some point.
making this movie was a torturous experience. Dealing with the Hollywood people was difficult. First of all, they couldn’t say “mnemonic.” They wanted to change the title to Johnny Gets His Gun, or some shit like that. And then, when Keanu blew up with Speed, they got really excited
