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Category / Nostalgia

Antique Computer Nostalgia

At the rate computer technology is advancing, photographer Mark Richards’ collection of computers are indeed historical. These machines are officially antiques. As someone that enjoys pressing buttons, I enjoy the nostalgia of vintage computers; how unsubtle they are compared to modern designs, with a man-made, non mass-produced artisanal quality about them. Core Memory is a coffee table…

That Time Donald Duck was a Nazi

Disney has its fair share of questionable cartoons in the archives and over the years, the company has been accused of everything from racism to sexism, the promotion of drug use and even pedophilia. And then there was that time that Donald Duck was a Nazi. In 1943, Walt Disney productions released the American animated…

When He Could Book a Men-Only Flight with United Airlines

It sounds like a plot line from an episode of Mad Men, but if you opened the Wall Street Journal in the 1950s and 60s, you were likely to have found an advertisement for United Airlines’ “club in the sky for men only”, offering complimentary cigars, cocktails, a steak dinner and special business amenities. The flights between…

Before the Eurostar: Remains of the Flying Rail Plane that Never Was

In a slight twist of fate, we might have been traveling between London and Paris in one of these thing-a-majigs– or more accurately, a propeller-driven ‘Flying Railplane‘. This fancy futurist contraption was invented by George Bennie and launched in 1930 as a prototype, designed for a more economical and rapid transport system between the two European capitals. The test track was…

Desire to Kill the Streetcar

In the 1920 and 30s, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle and countless other major American cities had sprawling electric streetcar rail systems until General Motors, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum and Firestone bought up a controlling interest in National City Lines. Once the monopolising companies owned the railways, they shut them down, forcing Americans to buy cars or…

A Compendium of Vintage Pool Parties

Some things just look like a lot more fun in vintage grainy photos. I found a ton of nostalgic of motel pool postcards on Flickr and couldn’t help but put together another little compendium of some fabulously kitsch “pool parties”. When I went road tripping in California last summer, I tried to stay in as many motels…

The Most Beautiful Car Race that Ever Was

It was the kind of race where if a car broke down, the driver would have been invited inside by locals for spaghetti. The track, littered with horseshoe nails, meandered through the tiny twisting streets of quaint Sicilian mountain towns while villagers watched Ferraris speed by at 100 miles an hour, perilously close to their doorsteps. The Targo Florio…

Lost Facades of the 1970s Anti-Walmart

Does anyone remember the American retail chain BEST Products? The last store disappeared in 1997 after forty years in business selling cheap home furnishings, consumer electronics, jewellery, housewares, toys from their catalog showrooms. Their retail concept might not have worked so well, but their architecture in the 1970s and early 80s made shopping trips to the strip…

Calling on her Cell Phone in 1922

Found by a researcher in the Pathe vaults, this clip from 1922, possibly filmed in New York, shows that 90 years ago, the idea mobile phone technology was not only being thought of, but being tested…. Of course, Eve’s Wireless is not technically a mobile phone, it’s a mobile ‘wireless’, which is what they used to call…

The Anti-Nazi Teen Gang that Beat Up Hitler Youth and Danced to Jazz

A band of adolescent music-lovers, swing dancers and snappy dressers– not exactly the type you’d expect to take on the Nazi Hitler Youth. But in pre-WWII Germany, the Nazi regimentation of society inadvertantly gave rise to massive teenage street gangs who beat up the Hitler Youth, tagged anti-Nazi graffiti at train stations– and listened to…

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