It only took a hundred years for this technology to truly take hold for the average person, but they sure understood what it would mean: DEVICE NOT IN DEMAND Some Objections to Proposed Telephone Attachment. A man in Portland, Ore., has invented a telephone attachment that will enable the person at one end of the […]
Author Archives: Derek Dahlsad
Requiem For the KKK, 1930s
In the archives for State Senator William Martin — remember him? He suggested North Dakota secede from the US — is this unique image, so unique it bears a mention in the state archives indexes: It’s titled “Bright and Shining Hopes Blasted? by the Kass Kounty Klan.”, and the poem reads: Here lies 44 as […]
American Pikelhaube, 1890s
Today’s Dakota Death Trip has a striking soldier in uniform for the Sunday photo; he may seem like the wrong sort of image to post for Memorial Day weekend. Thick mustache, guns stacked to the side, and the kind of helmet the Kaiser would praise a solder for keeping in good shape. That iconic helmet […]
Reposts and Aliases, 1884
One thing the internet both rewards and hates at the same time is when someone reposts something, without crediting the source, as their own fresh content, under an alias. Reddit has an entire culture revolving around it. Copyright defenders try to point out that just because something’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s free, but […]
Glassless Goggles, 1907
Scientific, automotive, and news publications announced this marvel of modern design in 1907: Can you guess what they are? Yes, they’re goggles, but what doesn’t come across in these images is that the “lenses” are actually steel plates. “Looked at from the distance of two or three feet away these plates appear to be solid […]
21st Century Aeroplanists, 1906.
The promise of flying cars and jetpacks in the 21st century has been around a long, long time: here is a comic from the french journal Le Pele-Mele: IN THE YEAR 2006 Aeroplanist to friend: “Just look down and you’ll see how backward they are in this part of the world. Why, the peasants still […]
Where’s Ward? 1881.
Click on this map to see a bigger version. In 1881, eight years before statehood, this is how the county lines were drawn in north-central North Dakota: Your first question if you’re familiar with this area is probably “Where’s Ward?” Ward, home to the city of Minot, is one of the most populous […]
Rushmore In Progress, 1930s.
We’ve got a lot of old photos – almost more than we know what to do with. This one is so over-saturated, so light, that I had to really darken it in Photoshop just to see anything, and I didn’t realize what it was at first: You might be thinking, “Wow — it kinda […]
Vienna General Hospital, 1900s
Alongside the glass plate of Sanssouci Palace is this ambulatory image: The plate is marked “Hospital Yard, Vienna”. I’m sure there have been many different hospitals in Vienna over the years, but the architecture clearly identifies this building: the Vienna General Hospital, otherwise known as “Allgemeines Krankenhaus der Stadt Wien”. The image above would […]
A Flat World, 1922
The caption from the 1922 newspaper reads: Wilbur Glenn Voliva, leader of the religious sect with headquarters at Zion City, Ill, says the earth is flat and that shortly he will prove it by taking a ship and sailing around the outer crust of the earth. Voliva proposes to captain a ship called the “Zion” […]