Bringing You the Wonder of Yesterday – Today
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In the 1940s, men and women had been pushing the technical limits of photography ever since the medium was born, well over a century before — but no one , it seems, had ever bothered to devote the energy, time and money it would take to devise a method for printing pictures directly on to fabric. Two New York-based companies were out to change that grave dereliction: by 1947, the “photographic fabrics [were] being produced in quantity by two new and rival processes.”
Both methods depend on a series of secret chemicals and dyes with which fabric is impregnated to make it light-sensitive. In the Foto-Fab process used by Leize, Inc. of New York a light shining through a negative film makes a positive print on cloth. In the Photone process of Ross-Smith Corp., also of New York, a positive film is used.
For the textile-printing industry photographic fabrics are the big news of the year. Although now limited to a group of restrained monotones, both pioneering companies are working to develop techniques that will give them full-color photographs on fabric and an opportunity to compete vigorously with traditional methods of printing fabric.
Kitchens are really the heart of the home, and everyone uses them differently.
The era of the 1960s was a crazy, eclectic time. Many different styles, influences, and novelties emerged in architecture design. On one hand, you had the elegant, classy and sleek forms from the 1950s and on the other the new colorful, psychedelic, and futuristic Space Age design.
Adding the cultural revolution into the mix, it was only natural that the changes highly influenced the way people thought about their home kitchens. It was a period in which kitchens ceased to be merely practical workrooms, in fact they became one of the central places of the household.
These color snapshots that show how kitchens were like from the 1960s.
Frank Zappa was born on December 21, 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Rosemarie (née Collimore) was of Italian (Neapolitan and Sicilian) and French ancestry; his father, whose name was anglicized to Francis Vincent Zappa, was an immigrant from Partinico, Sicily, with Greek and Arab ancestry.
Frank, the eldest of four children, was raised in an Italian-American household where Italian was often spoken by his grandparents. The family moved often because his father, a chemist and mathematician, worked in the defense industry. After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa’s father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to their home’s proximity to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the home in case of an accident. This had a profound effect on Zappa, and references to germs, germ warfare and the defense industry occur throughout his work.
Zappa was often sick as a child, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated his sinusitis by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa’s nostrils. At the time, little was known about the potential dangers of even small amounts of therapeutic radiation, and although it has since been claimed that nasal radium treatment has causal connections to cancer, no studies have provided significant enough evidence to confirm this.
Nasal imagery and references appear in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time collaborator Cal Schenkel. Zappa believed his childhood diseases might have been due to exposure to mustard gas, released by the nearby chemical warfare facility. His health worsened when he lived in Baltimore. In 1952, his family relocated for reasons of health. They next moved to Monterey, California, where his father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. They soon moved to Claremont, California, then to El Cajon, before finally settling in San Diego.
Below is a gallery of 28 rare childhood photographs of Frank Zappa with his family from between the 1940s and early 1950s.
Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. Situated on a bay on the east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey, it lies within the province of Leinster. It is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. It has an urban area population of 1,173,179, while the population of the Dublin Region (traditional County Dublin) as of 2016 was 1,347,359. The population of the Greater Dublin Area was 1,904,806 per the 2016 census.
There is archaeological debate regarding precisely where and when Dublin originated, with a settlement established by the Gaels during or before the 7th century CE, and a second, Viking, settlement, following. As the small Kingdom of Dublin, the city grew, and it became Ireland’s principal settlement following the Norman invasion. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire after the Acts of Union in 1800. Following independence in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State, later renamed Ireland.
Dublin is a contemporary and historical centre for Irish education, arts and culture, administration and industry. As of 2018 the city was listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) as a global city, with a ranking of “Alpha minus”, which places it as one of the top thirty cities in the world. (Wikipedia)
New Brighton is a seaside resort in Wallasey, Merseyside, England, at the northeastern tip of the Wirral peninsula. It has sandy beaches which line the Irish Sea and mouth of the Mersey, and the UK’s longest promenade.
At the 2011 Census, the population was 14,859.
(Photos: © Martin Parr/Magnum Photos)
Born in Pasadena, California in 1935, American bodybuilder and physical fitness expert Betty Brosmer started her model career at the age of 13. The result was more than impressive; she has won over 50 beauty contests, has appeared on magazine covers more than 300 times, her image decorated more than a hundred calendars, billboards across the country, and she was the highest paid model.
Brosmer was a forerunner of such stars as Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Her phenomenal measurements: 38-18-36 (in inches) and 96-45-91 (in centimeters) gave her the title “The most gorgeous body of 50s”. During the 1950s, she was a popular commercial model and pin-up girl.
After marrying entrepreneur Joe Weider in 1961, Brosmer began a lengthy career as a spokesperson and trainer in the health and bodybuilding movements. She has been a longtime magazine columnist and co-authored several books on fitness and physical exercise.
Take a look at these rare color pictures to see the beauty of Betty Brosmer in the 1950s.
(Photos via Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums)
