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Grab Bag

Grab Bag #67

Daguerreotype haters, poetry, tanks, blimps, and baseball.

Woody LaBounty

• 11 min read
Grab Bag #67
Daguerreotype haters, poetry, tanks, blimps, and baseball.
“Events, actions arise that must be sung, that will sing themselves.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson being the hype man for AI in the 1830s.

Guess Where

Grab Bags always start with the mystery photo. This may not be a difficult location to figure out and car folks will zero in on the year, but do you have an idea of what’s going on here?

Guess where
Who, what, where? (If they made an electric model of that convertible I would buy it today.)

Answer at the end for the loyal Friends of Woody who can pass the Mission Impossible iris-scanner and permeate the paywall line below. (Maybe it is time to take the leap?)

Technology Griping in 1852

Mayor C. J. Brenham and cronies
Bernard Peyton, Billy Edwards, Billy Botts, two-time San Francisco mayor Charles J. Brenham, John Saunders, and W.C. Walker in the 1850s. All obviously honest men. (Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley/ BANC PIC 2006.031--CASE)

Being old now, I have the privilege, the right—it’s in the constitution, look it up— to tell younger folks what’s good and bad compared to my ancient but oh so glorious youth.

Of course, it’s easy to focus on technology and phones and AI and blah blah blah.

In 1852, Sir Henry Veel Huntley was in San Francisco. While not seeing AI billboards everywhere, he was exposed to a new technology upon which he had opinions: photography.