JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

The first segment here is a collection of Lumiere brothers films, the first of which (made in 1896) shows the release of factory workers at their shift’s end–included are a large number of women:

Another lovely film called “Santa Claus”, which may well be the first movie of Santa ever made (1896):

Even though this 1899 film is entitled “Panorama of Calcutta” it is actually of Varanasi, India:

View from the front of a locomotive, coming into Barnstaple, 1898:

From the great BFI (British Film Institute), a lush moving picture of the launch of the HMS Albion, which actually shows the front end of the making of an enormous Thames River tragedy.

From the BFI channel:  “E.P. Prestwich’s footage of the launch of the battleship HMS Albion on 21 June 1898 looks deceptively serene and gentle. What it doesn’t show is that when the ship hit the water for the first time, it created a wave that swept away a jetty, drowning an estimated 39 people in the process, one of the worst peacetime disasters in the Thames’s history.”