More Old Real Photo Post Cards

After yesterday's excitement with a real photo post card of the Kaiser, today's seem like a much milder (and more boring) set.  No idea who or what or why they were taken.  Unlike the photo post card of the Kaiser, none of today's post cards match anything similar using Google Image Search.

The first would appear to be from the same era as the post card of the Kaiser, so early 1900's.  Maybe World War I.

It appears to be a soldier, from the hat and coat.  It's winter.  Holding two horses.  Next to a house.  But other than that?

The next is photographically similar.

A person, maybe a farmer?  With two cattle or oxen drawing a cart.  The cart has a tank of some kind on it. But it's too washed out to tell what time of year it is.  Or where.  Or when.

Both of these two have a really generic back side -- like the post card of the Kaiser.  Just a couple of lines on a blank back

The next couple of cards have more interesting backs (at least).  The first is just a picture of a house (farm house?) with a bunch of people -- probably a family.

But the format of the photo -- with a white border around it -- is different from the earlier ones that we saw from World War I in Europe.  Again, no time or location information is obvious from the photo.  It could be just about any rural American location in the early 1900s.

But now, the back tells us something

The "No. 2" is, I think, handwritten in pencil.  The stampbox,

according to the information at David Cycleback's web page on dating real photo postcards says "AZO" with 4 triangles in the corners, pointing up, which says this is from 1904 to 1918.  The divided back, the line separating the Correspondence from the Name and Address, was introduced in 1907.  The white border that we mentioned was "almost always date mid 1910s and after", becoming popular in 1915.  So this is probably 1910 to 1918; possibly 1915 to 1918.

The next post card is portrait mode, not landscape as all the others have been.

Clearly a photo of two people.  A Father and his Son?  Both people are fairly non-descript.  The man's tie is possibly interesting.  And there, on his lapel, is a pin (or button), but even at higher resolutions, there is no detail.

The stampbox on the back gives us some more information.

This is "AZO" but with four squares in the corners, which would be 1925-1940s.


Our last real photo post card is again a portrait mode, of a gentleman sitting and reading a newspaper.

But this looks very much staged.  He is carefully dressed in a tweed or wool suit, posed in front of a background suggesting an orchard or orange grove.

The back provides several pieces of information.

The stampbox is

being "PMO"  with 2 triangles up, 2 triangles down, means 1907 to 1915.

And then on the left hand side, the publisher:

But unfortunately, the Internet has nothing more to say about World Wonders Post Card Studio.

Given the time frame (1907 to 1915) and location of the publisher (Los Angeles), I would venture to suggest this might be a silent film star.   But that doesn't lead us anywhere either.

A post card of Kaiser Wilhelm

 Apparently there is a field of Real Photo Post Cards -- post cards that are effectively just a photograph (of the right size) with markings on the back to be used as a post card.  I found a page by David Cycleback from September 2017 about "How to Date Real Photo Postcards".  His area of interest is sports cards, but it's a more general discussion.  In particular, he has a list of how to identify age ranges for some cards (which he attributes to the2buds).


This card follows from our World War I post card theme, but from the German point of view.

 
This postcard shows the last German Emperor Wilhelm II. (1859-1941) with his sons Crown Prince Wilhelm, Prince Eitel Friedrich, Prince Adalbert, Prince August Wilhelm, Prince Oscar and Prince Joachim of Prussia in parade uniform.

There are various similar photos on the Internet, but the view is slightly different.  For example,

which seems to be the same event, but from a slightly different angle or time.  The same with

which would seem to be the same as our photo, but cropped and labeled with the names of the people.  There are pictures from the other side of the street.

Now this photo has two dates on it:  "1584 Verlag von Gustav Liersch & Co, Berlin S. W." in the lower left and "Nach Original Aufnahme von Photograph O. Haeckel Berlin. 1907." ( which translates to "After original photograph by photographer O. Haeckel Berlin. 1907") in the right. Otto Haeckel (1872-1945) was a well-known photographer around this time.  In retrospect, the 1584 might be a photo number, rather than a date.

But a similar photo, again different perspective, in Wikimedia dates it as 1 Jan 1913 or 27 Jan 1913 (the Kaiser's birthday).

The 27 Jan date gets a boost from another photo

Again this is (in the right corner this time) from "Verlag von Gustav Liersch & Co, Berlin S. W.", but numbered 4686, and in the right corner "A. Grohs. phot." (which would be Alfred Grohs (1880-1935)).  The caption is "Der Kaiser nimmt die Gratulation der Ahlbecker Kinder zu seinem Geburtstag auf der Schlossbrucke entgegen"  which translates to "The Kaiser accepts the congratulations of the Ahlbeck children on his birthday on the Castle Bridge."  Ahlbeck is a region of Germany on the Baltic Sea, right next to Poland.  The kids would be the the short people in the floppy hats near the left side of the photo.

But Getty Images has a copy that looks almost exactly like ours and labels it as 1 Jan 1912. 

 But look very closely at the two images -- the one just above from Getty images and the one at the very top of this post from our (scanned) post card.  While they are almost identical -- look closely at the people behind the Kaiser.  The Getty image has at least two soldiers mostly obscured by the Kaiser -- you can see their heads (and plumes) and one soldier's leg by the baton the Kaiser is carrying in his right hand. 

Our post card has none!

This isn't just a different angle or slightly later -- the Kaiser is exactly the same, as are the others around him, and the background. (I changed the sepia colors of our post card to black and white to try to make the two pictures look more alike, so the missing people are more obvious.)

Apparently they were Photoshopped out!  (A 100 years before Photoshop, so I guess they were airbrushed (?) out.)  Why?  Because they distracted your attention of the Kaiser?  But if that's the goal, why wasn't the man in black erased too?  Very curious! 

A follow-up.  A friend of mine took a Photoshop course and they went over how to reshape photos and lay the on top of one another to see how they differ.  He took the Getty image, and laid our post card on top of it.

The way that everything lines up shows that this is the same photo.  That is to say, the same negative was used.  But when the negative was printed, to develop the picture, the two versions -- the post card and the Getty image -- were slightly rotated and then cropped differently.  Plus there is the color difference -- black and white for Getty and a sepia for our post card.

If you then take the difference of the two photos, once they are lined up, 

you can see what was removed from our post card print:  The most prominent removal is the leg of one soldier that was behind the kaiser, from his waist down, showing thru between the kaiser's body and his arm.  Above the kaiser's shoulder (on the photo's left, but the kaiser's right) we see the faces and plumes of the two soldiers that were removed.  There is a third soldier's face and plume removed from the right of the kaiser -- between his head and the head of the man in black.  It is not as easy to see that soldier.

Actually, I've found the easiest way to see the differences is to go back to the two cropped photos of just the kaiser walking (above) and click on one of them to see the larger photo.  Then move forward and back between it and the adjacent (in the stream of photos).  In my browser, I can do that with just a click of my mouse wheel, forward and back, forward and back.  The two photos are not quite lined up in terms of crop and rotation, but close enough that your eyes will see the soldiers disappearing behind the kaiser, and then re-appearing, and then disappearing, as you toggle between the two photos.

More World War I Postcards

Another set of postcards from World War I has arrived in the mail from my Mother, via my Sister.  These are presumably from after the war, and are marked as being from  "Bureau War Photographs" and "U.S. Signal Corps".  We have two of the air and five of the water, so let's start with the air.

The first is a picture of some guys leaning on an airplane.

The caption, at the top, says "The only surviving members of the old 94th Aero Squadron.  Left to right -- 1st Lt. Reed Chambers, Capt. James Meissner, 1st Lt. E.V. Rickenbacker (Former Amer.Ace) 1st Lt. T.C. Taylor and J.H. Eastman."  At the bottom, left, it says: "U.S. Signal Corps Photo reproduced by Photo Repro Co N.Y. by permission Bureau War Photographs."

There are a couple of copies of this photo on the Internet, including one in the Wikipedia article on the "94th Aero Squadron", which identifies the photo as having been taken in November 1918 at Foucaucourt Aerodrome.

While Rickenbacker is identified as a (former) American Air Ace, both Reed Chambers and James Meissner are also identified as such in Wikipedia.

The other Internet copy of the post card shows a back that is obviously a post card, with the words "Post Card" and "Correspondence" and "Address Only" printed on it.  Our post card has almost nothing, just a few lines for the address and the hint of a rectangle for the stamp.

All of these World War I post cards have this same back.

The next, shows the planes in the air.

My first thought was these were near the Eiffel Tower, but closer inspection shows the "tower" to be a mast of a ship, and the background is over the open water.  The caption at top says "Group of Aeroplanes in battle formation, taken from one of the planes."  So maybe the tower is not a ship mast, but the tail of a plane.  Then it is not clear if the background is open water, or just dark and unfocused earth.

Again a lower caption says "U.S. Signal Corps Photo reproduced by Photo Repro Co N.Y. by permission Bureau War Photographs."


I found a reference to one on the Internet as being "Biplane in air", saying it is "Circa 1917" with a description "A group of American fighter planes (biplanes) is shown in mid-air. Pretty rare for photography at the time. That means that the pilot had to carry a camera and then turn around to take the photo."

From a bunch of planes in the air, we go to a bunch of ships in the sea.  Actually a bunch of submarines.

 The caption says "Type of under sea craft that helped earn the world's respect for the American fighter.  Picture taken off the Irish Coast".   These "under sea craft" are now called submarines.  A page on the Internet says this is Circa 1918, and taken at Bantry Bay, Cork County, Ireland, which would be the South West corner of Ireland.

Notice the the second sub from the right is labeled "AL9" on its conning tower, and the 5th from the right is labeled "AL11".  We can get a better view of this since it has it's own photo on another post card.

The caption says "Type of United States submarine that helped subdue the German U-boats during the World War."  (So I guess they were called submarines even then, but note it is just "The World War".)

Now it wasn't just the submarines that fought the U-boats.

The caption says "A death bomb dropped by an American torpedo boat destroyer to crush the German submarine.  Germany lost many U-boats thru these deadly bombs."  (Not sure if these were called "death bomb" or if this is a typo, and should be "depth bomb".)  On this postcard, the lower caption about "U.S. Signal Corps Photo reproduced by Photo Repro Co N.Y. by permission Bureau War Photographs." runs off the bottom of the card, and so is incomplete.

I'm not sure if a "torpedo boat destroyer" is a boat (a destroyer?) or an airplane.  But the next post card makes it clear that a destroyer is a type of boat.

The caption says "Destroyer making smoke screen that helped to successfully keep our convoys out of the German U-boat range."  I'm not sure how a smoke screen would help here -- the German U-boats used torpedoes that would go under the smoke screen, but maybe it makes it difficult to target the ships, if the U-boat is on one side and the convoy on the other.  It would seem that the smoke screen would actually attract U-boats, since it's more visible than just the boat, and says "Something to see here".

But maybe the smoke screen is actually for something else.

The caption on this post card says "View of smoke screen used to protect the mine-laying fleet in the back ground."  Here the caption is at the bottom of the card, not that the sky it would be obscuring at the top is more interesting than the sea it obscures at the bottom.  And why is "mine-laying" hyphenated?  The first part "mine-" could easily have been moved from the first line to the second line, and take up less space.

Looking for this photo on the Internet leads to a Naval History page about "The Northern Barrage and Other Mining Activities" from the Government Printing Office, 1920.

A similar photo, but not the same one, is on page 112 as U.S.N.234.

This photo from the Navy report would seem to have been taken just before (or just after) our post card photo -- it seems to be the same scene, with a small change in parallax due to the relative movement of the ships.