Saturday Evening Post Time Capsule: September 1900

In 1900, phonographs were all the rage and the electric light bulb was gaining popularity. But another innovation was about to enter American homes. It was small, simple, and inexpensive, but it would forever change how Americans saw themselves.

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The year 1900 saw shifts in how elections were won and a devastating hurricane, but it was a small, simple, and inexpensive device that would forever change how Americans saw themselves.

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Music: Danse Dramatique by Dee Yan-Key (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dee_Yan-Key/Trois_Valses_Sentimentales/Dee_Yan-Key_-_Danse_Dramatique) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).

Pine Apple Rag (Scott Joplin Piano Roll) by Scott Joplin Licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Joplin/Frog_Legs_Ragtime_Era_Favorites/Scott_Joplin_-_08_-_Pine_Apple_Rag_1908_piano_roll
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode

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Comments

  1. My Mother had A brownie box camera and many of our early family pictures were taken on it. A few years ago I found old pictures in a forgotten box containing family mementos; I took them to a photo store and they were able to digitalize & print them – I’m not sure of the film but it could have been 127 film. The pictures are fine – some a bit blurry but not bad for early pictures.
    I really enjoy the SEP magazine and the vintage videos.

  2. Such a fascinating look at an important month 119 years ago. I recall a feature the Post did some years back on shortening attention spans, in which the Class-4 Galveston hurricane (claiming 8-12,000 lives) was so quickly forgotten by the public; within a week. Really shocking to me then, and again now. That might have been the one where I commented pretty soon attention spans will be down to the level of a flea. We are there now, sadly.

    It appears the Kodak Box/Brownie camera was (for that time) probably a bigger phenomenon comparably than today’s expensive iPhones are to the present. Equally significant was the Post’s role as THE #1 media/ad media in the country, making THOSE Brownies hotter than the ‘other kind’ right out of the oven!

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