photax
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Post by photax on Oct 11, 2010 12:20:40 GMT -5
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Post by nikonbob on Oct 11, 2010 14:54:10 GMT -5
Always amazing to see then and now photos and see what has changed. Sometimes you wonder if it is for the better or not.
Bob
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Oct 11, 2010 15:16:01 GMT -5
MIK,
It always impresses me when someone is able to locate and replicate the placing of a camera or a painter many years after the original image was made.
In your first photo of the third set, that black streak on the left about 25% below the top, upon enlarging, turns out, I think, to be a train with a shallow arc of smoke rising from the engine
Mickey
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Doug T.
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Post by Doug T. on Oct 11, 2010 17:14:07 GMT -5
Hi Mik! I'm sure that some things have changed for the better, some haven't. Did it feel rather strange knowing that you stood on almost the same spot as the original photographer? Great photos, and a lot of food for thought. Thanks for posting them.
Doug
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Oct 12, 2010 10:30:54 GMT -5
Suburbs, highways, factories, bridges. I like puzzles. Is this it, for the first pair, looking N or NNW upstream, your viewing point among the bushes and trees to the left of bottom centre. Lower edge of photographs near the exit of the canal across the river, northern end of basin this side of the river.
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photax
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Post by photax on Oct 12, 2010 14:13:05 GMT -5
Sid, you got it exactly ! Mickey, I think the black streak is a shadow of a cloud, but there is a steam-train on the second original picture ( and a steamboat at the first picture ), the photographer must have climbed down to that area to get a close up of a train. Doug, as I was standing there I thought about how would this view be in 80 years. Bob, building a discharge canal that prevents the city from floodings was a big improvement since then and the drawbacks can be seen while sitting in traffic jam every day... MIK
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Oct 12, 2010 16:50:50 GMT -5
Mik, the most remarkable thing is the fact that you could still get access to the rough ground so near to the city. No apartment houses or petrol stations.
In fifty years' time? No trains because no fuel. Rails rusting because there's no energy to rip them up and reclaim them. Towpaths along the riverside for horses or men to pull the barges. Palm trees instead of hawthorn bushes.
I'd better stop before the censor gets me.
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Oct 13, 2010 16:15:23 GMT -5
Sid,
I think you're being far too gloomy. Watching too many movies like Mad Max, perhaps?
Oh my! I feel a ramble coming on.
I sometimes read or hear people talking about the future when the world runs out of usable energy. Well it won't. Most of these people are talking about fossil oil fuel and natural gas under the sea.
If we could go back a hundred or more years and talk with similar minded people in the UK they would have predicted gloom and doom when the UK ran out of fossil coal – the fuel that fired the industrial revolution and made the country prosperous.
Well we mine very little coal now and we're still here, with a generally much higher standard of living for most people than the Victorians and Edwardians had. Yes, the country is going through an economic depression and is heavily in debt, but how much of this is due to profligate wasting of natural resources, fighting two world wars and international speculation on the money markets is another subject.
At the moment we're dependant on other fossil fuels, oil and natural gas under the sea. But they aren't going to last for ever. The time will come when what's left is too costly to extract because other forms of usable energy will have replaced them.
I'm not talking about electricity generated by nuclear fired power stations, I'm talking about other forms of usable energy with far less potential hazard. Energy, remember, can't be created, nor can it be destroyed. But it can be changed in form. Already the big international oil companies are devoting research into other forms off usable energy, looking to the time when fossil oil dies out.
There is far more energy in the world unharnessed than there is harnessed. There is also far too much potentially usable energy thrown away than recycled into a usable form. I believe that at the moment the UK and Germany lead the field in recycling. Already there is a power station running near Liverpool that uses nothing but recycled household and industrial waste as a basic fuel source. I believe more are being planned both here and in Germany.
New dams are either under construction or being planned to give hydro-electic power. I believe the US leads in this field with many more hydro-electric dams than other countries.
We may see a return to the widespread use of canals because in terms of energy used per tonne per kilometre they are far more efficient than rail or road transport. Rail and road transport won't die out. They originally replaced the canals on which Britain's industrial revolution depended because rail and road were faster. They will still be widely used but their power units will probably have very little in common with today's engines that burn fuel derived from fossil oil. Similarly the engines that power air freight which I see as assuming more and more importance as more of the world becomes industrialised, for the international transport of goods which have a high value to weight ratio.
There will probably be a lot of changes globally. Heavier industry may well move from the developed western nations to the developing nations of the east. If it does, the goods will be far too heavy for air freight and will have to be transported by ship. But the power units in these ships, like those in railway engines and road transport, will have little in common with those in use today. As I mentioned, the big international oil companies are devoting a lot of research, and a lot of money, into developing power units which don't run on fossil fuel.
I haven't even mentioned other natural, sustainable sources of energy like wind power, tide power, solar power and the extraction of hydrogen from sea water, even harnessing the energy in cyclones and hurricanes.
I think the future is bright, not gloomy.
I've been fortunate enough to have lived through the start of an electronic revolution. When I was a boy I thought radio, being able to hear voices of people on the other side of the world, was a marvel. Now I can talk to people on this forum all over the world, and they can talk back to me, just by typing on to a computer keyboard. With a suitable program, and a web-cam, I could even talk with people on the other side of the world, verbally and face to face – assuming we undertstood the same language.
When will this bright future be? Fifty years from now? A hundred years? Who knows? Technology is developing so fast that when they get older my grandchildren will probably live in a world I wouldn't recognise. My big regret is that I won't be around to see it.
OK, end of ramble. If you've got this far thanks for staying with me. I've wrapped up my crystal ball – for the moment.
PeterW
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Oct 13, 2010 17:56:26 GMT -5
Peter, I'll revise the estimate. If we eat enough Caucasian yoghourt we could quite possibly still be here in fifty years. No, 150 or 250.
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photax
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Post by photax on Nov 17, 2010 13:00:47 GMT -5
Hi ! Here is another Then and Now picture. The left is copied from a 6x9 glassplate dated 1924, the right is one week old. As you can see, nothing has changed since then, excepting the road surface, some new paint and the cyclist. MIK
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