HOME |
RSS | 
You think you have weird stuff in your attic, imagine if you were a 130 year old company who is responsible in part for some of the world’s greatest inventions. The company has released a gallery of photographs that illustrate some lost but not forgotten gadgets including a 100 year old car charger and early solar cells.
GE called on photographer Hans Gissinger to shoot items from GE’s archives as well as more modern projects being worked on right now. Most of these items are stored in GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, near Schenectady, though they plan to head to other manufacturing plants across the country to capture the goodies stored elsewhere.
Archived TV and film footage is kept safe and sound underground in a salt mine in Kansas. The Hutchinson Salt Mine in Kansas covers 900 underground acres. When a section is finished as a mine, that space can be used for climate-controlled storage, through a company called Underground Vaults (which sounds like a name for a coffin company) and Storage. So far, around 50 acres are dedicated to storage facilities. In this interview, sales manager Jeff Ollenburger said,
It dates back to the Cold War era in the late fifties…a group of Kansas businessmen were seeing a need in the business community to store sensitive and vital records and information underground. It was the height of the Soviet Union and United States’ tension in the Cold War. Nuclear warfare was top of mind for everybody, and to get everything that was important underground was a key driving element of the security of the day, and it was that need to find a location that led that group to Hutchinson, to the salt mine. Here we’re in a salt mine that has been in operation since the twenties. And space was not a limiting factor–there was plenty of room, controlled access in and out, and a perfect storage environment, so it just kinda came to be that it was the ideal spot.
No water, no insects or animals, constant temperature and humidity, and that’s why so many Hollywood films, videotapes, props, and other memorabilia are stored there -plus governmental archives the company won’t tell us about. Link -Thanks, John!
Every once in a while, someone will say, “I wish I’d been around when that happened.” You can get a taste for what it was like to live through historical moments by watching converted film footage, news reports, historic speeches, sports coverage, and even famous musical performances on YouTube. This list has links to 101 available videos, some of which you’d never think of to look for on your own. Just a few are recreations. Pictured is a screenshot from the destruction of the Berlin Wall. This resource will be useful to help my children with their history lessons! Link -via the Presurfer
