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Aerial Photographs of the 1906 Earthquake 208

Posted by michael from the pioneering dept.
hansoloaf writes "In 1906 San Francisco had a devastating earthquake - registering around 7.7 to 8.3 on the Richter scale. George Lawrence had devised ways to take aerial photographs and went to SF to showcase his technology. He used kites and custom built cameras that could take photos while up in the air."
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Aerial Photographs of the 1906 Earthquake More

Aerial Photographs of the 1906 Earthquake

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  • 2nd post and the sites going down fast..

  • Digital camera version (Score:2, Interesting)

    by emcron ( 455054 ) *
    And people thought Phillip Torrone [flashenabled.com] was ahead of the times [engadget.com] :-)

  • Flaming Friscans (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
    When I lived in SF, all the natives (hard to find) referred to that quake as "The Fire". Because the ensuing fire destroyed more of the city than did the quake. Because (as was revealed in early 1990s research) when the city started to burn, the wily (don't call them) Friscans torched all their own buildings. To collect the insurance money in a huge suck off the insurance companies to the East. Since the oldest buildings had been built only a couple of generations prior, and most had been built in the prior
    • And this is obviously completely different from the East, where landlords do not burn down buildings for the insurance money.
      • The last time a fire the size SF/1906 was set, NYC colonists burned their British landlords' buildings to the ground. So, if you want to keep this "East Coast vs. West Coast" thing going (you're on your own), you're going to have to burn Boston.

        • Re:Flaming Friscans (Score:4, Funny)

          by captnitro ( 160231 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @10:21PM (#11057674)
          This is like an east-west Slashdot nerd beef.

          Who's the bigger badass? Who set fire to the their home city to collect the insurance? And when they collected, did they bling the hell out of their horse-drawn carriage and get diamond-encrusted bonnets for their fineass bitches? Dollar dollar bill, y'all, trolls ain't touchin' that shit.
        • The last time a fire the size SF/1906 was set, NYC colonists burned their British landlords' buildings to the ground. So, if you want to keep this "East Coast vs. West Coast" thing going (you're on your own), you're going to have to burn Bost

          Can us Brits join in? Burning down the President's house must score at least double.

          Best wishes,
          Mike.

        • The last time a fire the size SF/1906 was set, NYC colonists burned their British landlords' buildings to the ground.

          Well, there was also that Great Chicago Fire.
          • Set by Mrs. O'Leary's cow? Actually, California has all these arsons beat in the annual "Golden Torch" forest fires. But that's hardly the same as these urban fires, unless you're chained to your treehouse.
            • Set by Mrs. O'Leary's cow?

              Probably not Mrs. O'Leary's cow, and not something that's scientifically provable either way.

              But given that there was alot of heavy anti-Irish sentiment and bias at the time, it's not suprising that someone tried to blame some poor Irish farmer.

              And homosexuals caused 9/11.

              "Oh oh! Watch out Itchy! He's Irish!" -- Milhouse

    • fire yes, but you're the one who is smoking... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jim McCoy ( 3961 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @10:01PM (#11057603) Homepage
      There was a big fire that torched most of the city, and some of it was intentionally set, but most of it was caused by the quake itself (wooden buildings, fire/candles/oil-lamps as primary heat and light source, etc.) There was no conspiracy to bilk those big eastern banking interests, and since this was 1906 I would point out that _all_ current architecture was Victorian. In fact, because of the fact that the entire city was basically re-built in 1907 it probably has the largest collection of Victorian buildings left in the US.

      The efforts made to stop the fire, using fire fighting technology that was "primitive" at best, were truly herculean. The cause was not helped by the fact that the earthquake had also destroyed most of the water mains and distribution infrastructure. [A couple of blocks from where I used to live there was a fireplug with a big brass plaque next to it that declared that particular plug to be the only one in the city that did not lose pressure during the firefighting effort after the quake (20th & Church next to Delores Park for locals)]

      What eventually stopped the fire was a decision by the authorities to create a major firebreak by essentially blowing up a 1 block wide path down Van Ness Ave.
      • So you're buying into the official con job that lasted almost a century, as the study to which I referred revealed. Thanks for chiming in! And though I did remark on the timeframe in which the sacrificed contemporary Victorian buildings lived their short lives, I will note that Victoria died in 1901; the period of 1901-1910 is known as "Edwardian" after her successor. Of course, SF has long had a taste for retro styles, so continued to build Victorian style buildings. I didn't say that *all* the Victorians
        • > the period of 1901-1910 is known as "Edwardian"

          Doc Ruby is no scholar, as any first semester student of architectural history could tell you. The "Victorian era" began in the 1880s and lasted well into the 1940s. It encompasses Craftsmans, Prairies, Monterey Revivals, Tudors, and yes, even "Edwardians".

          r7
      • You wrote:

        In fact, because of the fact that the entire city was basically re-built in 1907 it probably has the largest collection of Victorian buildings left in the US.

        IIRC, AFAIK, etc. Queen Vicky was pushing daisies at that point, and the architecture that followed on and was rampant throughout was known as Edwardian, after her boy King Edward.

        RS

      • What eventually stopped the fire was a decision by the authorities to create a major firebreak by essentially blowing up a 1 block wide path down Van Ness Ave.

        So they played Sim City, too?
      • Including doctored photos wich for a long time had been accepted as real. Simple examination with modern tools show that a lot of the photos we accept as accurate had infact been colored in to reduce the quake damage.

        The fact was that quake damage was not covered by insurance. Fire damage was. If your property had been destroyed in the quake you got none. If it had survived the quake but been later destroyed in the fire resulting from the quake you got your money back.

        So their was a very large scale fraud

    • The army is ruthlessly dynamiting buildings to create firebreaks, giving way to no one, and in a mood to shoot first and ask questions later. Looters are being shot on sight. Gas leaks are igniting fires everywhere, the water mains are broken. The grand Palace Hotel with it's own reservoir is burning to the ground. 3,000 are dead. 28,000 buildings worth $500 million have been destroyed. It is dead certain your tinderbox Victorian mansion will be the next to go.

      But for twenty cents on the dollar you mean to

    • i think it was on the discovery channel that i heard this

      San Francisco was built mainly on filled up marsh. the 1909 quake shook up the filling which made them settle, collapsing/burying the buildings built on it. later in order to stop land values dropping from the effects of the quake they focused attention on the fire..

      of course i could be wrong

      Suchetha
      • of course i could be wrong

        1906 means the city has natural gas lines, AC and DC electric power lines running everywhere, flammable liquids, gasoline, oil, kerosene, stored and in use everywhere for stationary engines, stoves, heaters, lanterns, etc.

        But the water mains are mid-19th century construction, with small neighborhood reservoirs for emergencies. You have a few of the first "modern" fire trucks, telephone and telegraph systems for dispatch, but no radio.

        The big quake will crack the gas mains, the w

        • It took a lot less than an earthquake to burn down the city of Baltimore [mdch.org]on February 7,1904. Although the fire's exact origins are unknown, it is suspected that a dropped match or cigarette fell through a broken basement skylight window on a sidewalk adjoining the Hurst Building, located near the present First Mariner Arena. The fire probably smoldered for a while, then caught on some stored gasoline for a stationary engine in the Hurst Building. Within minutes of the initial alarm, the entire building was
      • San Francisco was built mainly on filled up marsh. the 1909 quake shook up the filling which made them settle, collapsing/burying the buildings built on it. later in order to stop land values dropping from the effects of the quake they focused attention on the fire..

        History repeats itself - during the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 the soil under the Marina District of San Francisco liquified and down came the buildings [usgs.gov]. Damage there was much more severe than in neighbouring areas of the city which were

  • Google cache (Score:3, Funny)

    by loconet ( 415875 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @09:39PM (#11057516) Homepage
    Here [google.com] is the Google cache view of the 2004 slashdot effect on rtpnet.org servers. Notice the missing pictures - sign of destruction this natural disaster left in its path.

  • Awesome (Score:3, Funny)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @09:40PM (#11057519) Homepage Journal
    It should also show you that there have always been nerds.

    Hang in there, guys. One day you'll do something cool like take a picture of total devastation.

    You'll be famous for 15 minutes, chicks will be drawn, you'll be tricked into marrying one, and then years later when she asks if you'd mind if she went out with her friends from work you can say, "Well ... ok, have fun, you deserve it."

    Then you can be like me, free at last to read /.
  • Another place to look for media about the quake/fire is the Internet Archive [arcive.org]. If you go to the Prelinger Archives of the video section and search for "San Francisco Fire" the first two entries are videos of Market Street before and after it happened. Or, since the average Slashdotter and Slashdaughter are lazy, here are the search results [archive.org].
  • I propose that Slashdot Scale = 1 / (time it takes after post for server to explode)
  • This article first appeared in the Landscape magazine, Volume 30, Number 2, Summer 1989. And the event the article was about was almost a century ago!
    • Yes! For God's sake, people, can't we get some new stories, say, about a guy who built trampolines out of condoms or maybe some nut who ported Quake III onto a PDP-11? Some real news, damnit!
  • "Nobody reads /. for the articles, just the comments!"

    So how are you supposed to comment on a site which gets Slashdotted in seconds? Is it too much to ask for both readers and the people who get their sites totalled for /. to start using Coral and FreeCache?

    Dag, yo. :(
  • Aww, come one. Kite aerial photography [berkeley.edu]. There's been links about that on Slashdot before. That link talks about events which happened 98 years ago!

    I know Slashdot sometimes report on old news or dupe, but that's ridiculous.


    ;)

  • Mirrored (Score:5, Informative)

    by markclong ( 575822 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @09:57PM (#11057586)
    http://slushdot.org/mirror/earthquake/landscape.ht ml [slushdot.org]
  • a camera on a kite? isn't that asking for trouble? Wouldn't a hot air baloon be a lot more stable?

  • Less than three weeks before, the earth had shaken and the city had burned.

    Nowadays we'd have aerial photography as the earthquake was occuring! Apparently it took three weeks or so to travel from New York to San Fran way back in 1906. That's nutty. Just goes to show you how far we've come in 100 years and how spoiled we've all become.

    • Re:3 Weeks Later?! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by acvh ( 120205 )
      actually, now we have live coverage of the quake, with MSNBC news bunnies emoting over the destruction as it occurs.

      of course, I'll tivo it and watch it later, after South Park, which will have its earthquake episode next Wednesday.

    • Nutty? Yeah Right. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stvangel ( 638594 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @11:00PM (#11057800)
      Only 3 weeks was awesome and they were glad to have it. Just 54-60 years before was the California Gold Rush when the travel time was a lot longer. If you went by land it was 5-6 months IF you arrived at all. Lots of people died along the trail. If you went by sea it was more like 1-3 months IF you lived. Lots of people died of disease by crossing Panama on foot or were lost sailing all the way around South America.

      Nowdays, people get pissy when their four hour flight gets delayed for an hour because of bad weather. People don't really realize how much and in how short a time things have changed in this world. There are people alive who can tell you about the 1906 earthquake and fire because they were there. The last of the civil-war widows only died a year or two ago.

      People talk about "Ancient History" but it really wasn't all that long ago.
  • 100 years later, the quake is still causing damage (in this case to webservers...)
  • I recall seeing posts here complaining about Slashdot being a month or a year behind the news, but almost a century? That's gold. They must be really desperate for news.

    This just in: I brushed my teeth.

  • Maybe better luck finding those images (Score:5, Informative)

    by Scareduck ( 177470 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @11:02PM (#11057811) Homepage Journal
    Available at the Library of Congress [loc.gov] website.

  • Photo of shift along fault line (Score:3, Interesting)

    by earlgreen ( 776222 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @11:02PM (#11057812)
    Wherever I got this photo [wingware.com] (many years ago; alas, I've lost the source) it was claimed that it shows the movement of the fault line during this earthquake -- the fence in the picture got separated by a gap of 8 feet and had to be mended!

    Don't know if it's a hoax, but I thought it pretty interesting.


  • Ok, I assume that he took pics of the damage from the quake? I can't see the second link because it has been /.'d but I can make that jump in logic and hope to be right.

    But seriously, this seems like a random front page story. I almost think that I could make any article I wanted about kite photography and get it posted. There have been so many kite stories lately...I'm too lazy to post links to them all. But a quick search in old stories turns up at least 5 since July.

    I think I know enough about kite
    • Yeah, it is pretty random. This site has been around for awhile.

      Perhaps the "sudden interest" in it was the fact that it was posted on MetaFilter yesterday [metafilter.com].
      • But seriously, this seems like a random front page story. I almost think that I could make any article I wanted about kite photography and get it posted.

      I think what is amazing about this story, is that in the day of enormously heavy cameras with pretty slow speed film, this guy was able to take very good ariel pictures. While not "news", I would call it a "public interest" story demonstrating the longevity of geek spirit - that's definitely "stuff that matters". I'm glad this was on today.


  • Hasn't he done enough damage already to warrant a trip to Guantanamo or something? I mean, every time I hear anything about an earthquake, his name is mentioned.

    Something has to be done.

    -Bush

  • This is cool. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by catdevnull ( 531283 ) on Saturday December 11, 2004 @01:03AM (#11058313)
    All you guys pissing about with "this is old" or "so what" are missing the point...this was innovation and the photos are quite unique considering the time period. Check out the design on the kites. Don't be such 4th graders...oh, wait. This is slashdot--you probably are 4th graders.
    • While this is cool technology indeed, it is not new. Slashdot's adage is "news for nerds, stuff that matters". I am personally very interested in the history of mathematics, science and engineering. But it is not to feed that interest that I visit slashdot. Thousands of other cool historical things exist: invention of motion picture, the television, important physics experiments, the discovery of physical laws...
      all of them interesting and cool, but not new.

      Now if these pictures would have been found bac
  • A little narrative to go with your pictures -- check out this gripping account [berkeley.edu] of this very earthquake by author Jack London (of Call Of The Wild fame).
  • Pics of the SF earthquake - this must have been quite the news flash -98 YEARS AGO. Sort of the ultimate repeat post. If there was a slashdot back then, I'm sure this would have made it as a story.
  • These pictures (both the perspective and the devistation) remind me a lot of the big panoramic picture that they have on the wall of the atomic bomb museum at Peace Park in Hiroshima. Except I imagine the pictures in Hiroshima were taken from an airplane rather than a kite.
  • Am I the only one who finds it blackly humorous and more than a little creepy that one of the few buildings remaining standing in the first picture is the California Casket Company??

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