Circa 1925: Atwater Kent sweatshop photo
 

Take a look at this photo of a gazillion ladies in an Atwater Kent radio factory [circa 1925] in Philly, PA.

Seems they are assembling capacitors on motorized spooling equipment.


This is a large 2300 x 1846 (893 KB) JPEG image.
Warning: bandwidth alert
http://www.shorpy.com/node/4785?size=_original


This is a smaller 512 x 411 (65 KB) JPEG version of the same photo.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/4785

That is a way cool pic. Thanks!

What he said! Thanks for the new desktop background.:thmbsp:

Another one... http://www.shorpy.com/node/3534?size=_original

Notice that the gals are working and all the guys are just standing around.

No surprises there. :)

Somebody's Watchin' The Camera!
 

http://audiokarma.org/forums/attachm...1&d=1231648225

Great photos!!

I noticed her too. I bet she was a humdinger of a gal. :yes: She looks like she knew the photographer. Lucky guy. :D

I love industrial pictures, probably more than nature pics.

Take a look at this photo of the AK (Atwater Kent) radio factory, circa 1925! This factory was huge !!!!
Warning: big photo coming
http://www.shorpy.com/node/3542?size=_original


Is this the first portable boom box, circa 1930? It's an Atwater Kent radio toted on a two-wheeled cart.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/1979

I love the depth and clarity of the photographs taken with these huge but simple cameras of this era. Outstanding photography.

The detail comes from the size of the negitive. Since the size of a grain of silver is the same size weather 35mm or 8X10 an 8X10 negitive has 53.33 times the number of grains to record the image on! try that with you digital.

The long panorama shot you see from that time period would have been shot with a Cuirut camera that had a curved film plane and the film was on a roll as the camera traversed an arc (geared head on the tripod) the light passed through a slot and exposed the film since the film plane matched the arc there is no lens distortion and the whole frame is in focus as they would line up the soliders or who ever on an arc again matching the film plane. When the photo was printed it could be 4 feet long and all of it be in the same plane of focus.

Nice photos. Proportions would match 8x10 format. Perhaps taken with a Kodak Wide Field Ektar; still a desirable lens today. You could get faster film today, but other than that, things have not improved much in large format B&W photography since then.

Women working in factories before union organization took place.

"Rosie the riveter" worked hard to change that!

Many people today take it for granted that everyone gets a decent wage. Back then it was "work, or make way for the next employee"!!!

Regards, Ron

This is color, but you would be hard pressed to get this beautiful of a picture these days. Once digital reaches this level, then it will be king. I love the colors of this picture. The gal ain't bad either.

http://www.shorpy.com/node/5231?size=_original

That's KODACHROME LOVE THAT KODACHROME

Almost gone now only one lab in the world still processing it Dwaynes in Kansas. last hope for the 8mm film students and those holding on to there K64 and K200

and it wasn't digital it was cost to dispose of the processing chemicals that are ending it's 70+ year run.

Thanks VinylHanger for the link. I am enjoying the site!

To give credit where it is due, I was just following the top link. Glad you like it. I have spent a bunch of time on that site this weekend.

i went to shorpys and got the rest of those pics. did a presentation on atwater kent at the local ham radio club. brought in my 40 model and external speaker. they loved it.

Ah, that Kodachrome! Seems a shame that we are near the end for what remains the MOST detailed (grain size down to individual molecules in a fairly dense array - nothing digital comes close, short of specialized military-spec satellite spy cameras you can't even buy!) and durable color film ever created. Kept in decent conditions, Kodachrome color should last at least a century; some of the earliest Kodachrome pics ever taken still show vibrant color. A few of the last films created could give it a run for the money on color accuracy, but it remained and remains one of, if not the, best film ever made.

Alas, it won't be around for too many more years, it seems. I have over 8,000 Kodachrome slides I took mostly when traveling (for work) around Asia. After trying all of the (back then) twelve processing centers, I used to send my slides to Japan for processing, since it was the closest lab and they did good work. Love that stuff!

It wouldn't be so bad if digital were an improvement, but not only is the resolution not there, do you really expect current digital pics to remain view-able 100 years from now? Theoretically, they could be, but it assumes the formats and software will not change too much, and/or that the pics won't suffer from too many conversions...assuming someone even bothers to convert them when standards change. Doubtful, at best!

Even Paul Simon knew Kodachrome was a good thing! :D

I'll shed a tear when the last Kodachrome lab shuts its doors, for the world will have become a little bit diminished, a little poorer, a little more deprived. That shouldn't happen in today's world!

That is not Kodachrome...and its not a Circuit camera...its just a large format negative (probably 8" by 10"). The really cool thing about the Circuit camera was that the lens was on a spring-wound motor and would "pan" the scenery. Take a look at some of those Circuit photos and you can see that the guy on the right side could be in the shot and then run around the back of the camera and be on the left side in the same photo. That being said: Kodachrome rules. My dad shot Kodachrome 16mm movies and they are in perfect shape today.

Great images. Thanks for the link, too!

When I was a kid in the late '50's, I would take old radios apart. I'd unroll the old electroytics and not give one thought of how it was made in the first place. Thats one fine set-up they had.

Concur. I have Kodachrome movie prints that were made in the late 1940's. Wow.

Thanks for the link to the pictures, SAE2922. Very fascinating.

Life was different in the past, in so many ways. "My girlfriend works in a radio factory, making capacitors." How cool would that be? These days, most jobs (men or women) seem to be in stores or shuffling papers and data. How many REAL jobs are there left in the USA?

Atwater Kent was the largest radio manufacturer in the World in 1925, their radios are very well made, I own ten of them. In 1936, Kent closed down the factory since the era of the cheap radio had arrived and wanted no part in the degrading of the radio marketplace.

Yeah, thanks for sharing! Those shots are spectacular. :thmbsp: