Urban Traffic
This video has been making the rounds of late. It's Market Street in San Francisco on April 14, 1906, four days before the great 1906 Earthquake.
The camera was set up on the front platform of a cable car, and aimed out the end windows to record the scene as the cable car trundled down the street at a stately 5 MPH or so toward the Embarcadero. My comments after the jump.
Apart from the undeniable time-machine coolness of watching a 104-year old movie, there are a few things that strike me about this film.
- First is the sheer anarchy of traffic. There are no lane stripes, no stoplights or stop signs, no crosswalks. Other than a tacit agreement that everyone keeps to the right side of the road, there don't seem to be any rules at all. In just the first minute, we see a horse-drawn bus and an electric streetcar plowing through cross-traffic on Market (0:20 and 0:26, respectively) and autos making aggressive U-turns right in front of the cable car (0:24 and 0:33). So many pedestrians are ambling across the street between vehicles that I lost count. There's a police officer who crosses the tracks just in front of us at 0:39, and he doesn't seem to be too concerned with writing any traffic tickets.
- Even the convention of what side of the road to drive on is less than strictly observed. We have a freight wagon on the "wrong" side of the street at 0:16, and an automobile at 3:30.
- Notice, too, that some automobiles have the steering wheel on the right, and others on the left. That particular design issue wasn't fully sorted out for a couple more decades. The last right-hand drive autos built in the U.S. were made by Stutz in 1921.
- Notice how much horse-drawn traffic there is, especially horse-drawn freight traffic. There's even a man on a white horse (on the "wrong" side of the street) at 4:10. Those who would curse the modern automobile as a source of pollution should perhaps consider how much pollution the gasoline engine got rid of--all of the "exhaust" those horses must have generated, and how much effort it took to clean it off the streets . . . and your shoes . . . and the carpet in the lobby or the front hallway where you tracked it in.
- What's the story with the two guys chasing the automobile starting at 4:52 or so? They grab on and sort of run with it, dodging along in and out of traffic until the car makes a left turn from the right lane; you see them let go about 5:31. Did they know the driver, or was it just a random prank by a couple of teenagers with nothing better to do? Do they have any connection to the snappily dressed newsboy who gets on the tracks at about 5:05 and seems to dare the cable car to catch him? You could get a dozen short stories out of that forty seconds or so of film.
- At 5:51, you'll notice an electric streetcar track which crosses the cable-car route from the left and then runs parallel in the "lane" to our right. Starting at this point on Market Street, there are two transit companies operating competing services on two different sets of tracks. By 1918, there were four tracks down the full length of Market Street, and during rush hour trolleys ran nose-to-tail on all four. The "roar of the four," as they called it, lasted until 1947.
Quite apart from its subject matter, this sequence has particular historical significance as the first film made in 35mm format. It was originally thought to be from 1905. The correct date was recently determined by historian David Kiehn of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, from clues such as old weather records and theater listings, the length and direction of shadows (from which you can determine the position of the sun in the sky, and the time of day), and the license plates on passing cars. Mr. Kiehn even ran the plate numbers and has the owner's name for all the cars.
I don't know early automobiles well enough to tell you what particular makes and models we see in the film, but these are pre-Model T rides. In that day and age, the price of a Packard was about equal to the price of an average house, and even more pedestrian makes like Winton or Buick or Olds were priced out of the reach of many. The drivers we see are most likely members of the upper income brackets. It is amazing to consider that the most humble, unadorned, base-model hatchback you see today sells new for a fraction of the price (in inflation-adjusted terms) of that Packard, and has capabilities and features that 1906 Packard's owner could not conceive of.
One cannot help but wonder if, say, 104 years from now, the readers of Car Lust will look on our crude Hafner-era videoclips of streets filled with Camrys and Civics with the same sense of amazement that this film stirs in us today.
--Cookie the Dog's Owner
Mochi Mochi on April 09, 2010 at 12:11 PM
Prior to the earth quake in 1906 the maximum speed of everything was 5 mph. Beyond that everything took place in slow motion or "slow time" so it was possible to safely dodge almost anything except bullets. This was the reason why there were so few fatalities at the time and none were actually captured in this film despite the chaos of the streets.
A few days after this film was shot, the 1906 Earthquake opened a temporal rift in the fabric of space-time which subsequently caused all motion to increase - the "effective frame rate of life" then was forced suddenly to match actually measured distance and time standards known in other parts of the world.
This effective time shift caused a great deal of confusion in San Francisco which continues even today, 104 years later. Having driven in SF I can tell you that today's traffic is not really that different than that shown in this film - minus the white horse. Even the clothing styles are not significantly different today, since the fashion scene in the Bay area is supported by "vintage" clothing shops and the "used clothing movement".
One thing is clear however. The space time temporal rift had an eddy-effect which left pockets of the old slower frame rate floating about in the ether of the city - the popularity of the "slow food" movement is one instance and a continued reminder of this. On the streets and freeways this is currently evidenced by the tendency of SF drivers to mysteriously decelerate and/or drive at excessively slow speeds everywhere they go. This here-to-fore unexplained phenomenon is now understood to me caused by bubbles of "slow time" which bump into or encapsulate drivers... some are never able to fully escape the effects of these space-time bubbles. These lost souls eventually migrate across the bay bridge to Berkeley or head north to Davis and Sacramento.
Gemel on April 09, 2010 at 03:10 PM
Haha Mochi.
This is a great video.
Obviously I'm also not old enough to remember when the world was really black and white, ha.
David Drucker on April 10, 2010 at 06:24 AM
I was mesmerized. Thanks for posting this. (I took the liberty of reposting it on a guitar forum that I frequent.)
Robert Sendler on April 10, 2010 at 02:55 PM
My maternal Great Grandmother was in her mid teens in NYC about the same time and one of her stories that really struck home was the horse "exhaust" story. She'd tell it every time someone complained about pollution. The worse part was when she'd describe what happened to all that "exhaust" in the summertime. Just imagine all that "exhaust" as it dried and then was powdered by thousands of hooves into clouds of "exhaust".
Everywhere. On everything.
Covered in "exhaust".
Needless to say my Great Grandmother was not a big advocate of "The Good Old Days".
Mgmax, le Corbeau on April 11, 2010 at 06:19 AM
If you like this sort of view of the past, check out the Mitchell-Kenyon films:
http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Edwardians-Films-Mitchell-Kenyon/dp/B000FSME60/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1270991825&sr=8-1
Paul in NJ on April 11, 2010 at 06:28 AM
> What's the story with the two guys chasing
> the automobile starting at 4:52 or so? They
> grab on and sort of run with it
Looks to me like they're pushing the car to
help the driver jump-start it. Note the puff
of exhaust at 5:14.
KevinF on April 11, 2010 at 06:59 AM
No fat people!
Dick Eagleson on April 11, 2010 at 07:05 AM
The viewer of a comparable video shot today, but screened in 2114, would be most amazed at the fact that every single vehicle on the road was guided by a human driver instead of by networked computers as God intended.
edh on April 11, 2010 at 07:18 AM
I don't see any overhead wires for the electric streetcars.
Mike K on April 11, 2010 at 07:32 AM
I had a patient who was there during the earthquake. He was 15 and was wandering the country to see the sights, partly because he didn't get along with his stepfather. He was spending the night in a rooming house with two other boys when the quake hit and his bed was thrown across the room. Those rooming houses were wood structures with brick facades. The wood structure survived but all the brick facades fell into the street. Once the quake was over, the three of them got dressed and packed their gear and went out to see what was happening. They sat in Union Square and watched the city burn because most of the damage was from fire. All the water mains broke so they had to line up for water that was brought over by barge to the Embarcadero every day. They finally got out of the city after two weeks. He had quite a tale.
When I first drove in San Francisco in 1956, there were no stop signs and the first car in the intersection had right of way. It made it exciting in those steep hill intersections.
setnaffa on April 11, 2010 at 07:42 AM
Thanks for the video.
I think people were (for the most part) just more considerate of others back then--less concerned with getting ahead of each other.
I blame "Madison Avenue" (mass-marketing) for infecting us all with "progress" and Narcissism...
Lucygoosey on April 11, 2010 at 07:45 AM
I kept wondering how many of those people going about their daily business in the film were dead four days later.
Casper on April 11, 2010 at 07:50 AM
One of the things that most struck me was the long, oddly-low stride most of the men walked with. They must have had very different footwear. Probably heavier, maybe loose-fitting cowboy boots that would slip off your heels if you lifted your feet too high. An adjustment in movement that you would have had to make all day.
SteveBrooklineMA on April 11, 2010 at 07:54 AM
There is a scene-by-scene description of this film, and an "after the quake" video to go along with it here (Library of Congress)
http://tinyurl.com/yaknec7
RetiredE9 on April 11, 2010 at 08:08 AM
From the number of people looking back at the camera I assume it was unusual enough to attract attention. I was struck with the number of cars given the expense and reliability of them in those days. I think it was on a "Top Gear" that they claimed the standard layout of transmisson shift, and the clutch, brake, and gas pedals weren't standardized until the Austin Seven in 1922 (steering wheel on the wrong side of course) Even the Model T had an odd shift, clutch, gas, brake layout.
Fewer ladies at the end of the tape. I'm not familiar with San Fran so...less shops? bad neighborhood?
Simply fascinating.
Jeff Smith on April 11, 2010 at 08:15 AM
The long relaxed stride of the men (most of who seemed to be business or professional types) and the relative absence of women struck me the most.
Polly on April 11, 2010 at 08:28 AM
What struck me was everyone had on hats.
Hartley on April 11, 2010 at 08:34 AM
I'm thinking that odd gait or stride appearance is more of an artifact of the frame-rate conversion. I note that the flag flapping on top of the building looks a little off, too.
Cookie the Dog's Owner on April 11, 2010 at 08:35 AM
RetiredE9: I think you're right about there being something "unusual" attracting everyone's attention. Motion picture equipment would have been an extremely uncommon sight in 1906. I suspect the cable car was being run as a "photographer's special" -- it doesn't seem to be stopping to let anyone on or off.
Koblog on April 11, 2010 at 09:15 AM
What's really great about a piece of analog film like this is that after all this time we can still pull an image from it. The story is told of a fellow going into a farmer's greenhouse and noticing the glass panes were actually 8x10 civil war negatives shot in 1865 by Matthew Brady. Prints could still be made from them.
Not so with our newfangled video and digital formats.
Ever heard of the Panasonic M 1/2" professional video format? No? The entire early history of the B-2 bomber was shot on that format. Hundreds of hours of development, manufacturing and flight test. Good luck finding a player that will allow you to see what's on that tape even today, just 25 years later, much less a hundred years hence. It is lost, even though the tapes are safely stored for the time being until someone says, "We need the space. Throw it out."
And if you say, "Well, just transfer it to a newer format..." think again. There is no one willing to pay for it.
Then there's 3/4" video format; other formats like 1/2" Betacam; 1" and 2" video. And the tape itself is falling apart because the emulsion binder is failing. Unless it's digitized, and even at that stored on a playable format, it's all lost.
I thought I had captured my resume forever when, in 1983, I typed it into an Apple II word processor and saved it onto a 5-1/4" floppy. By the time I wanted to update it, both the computer and the program I wrote it in were gone. Some precious stuff is on the hard drive of my Mac Plus in the garage...if it can even boot. Some digital "history."
They say the web is forever, but servers crash, hard drives fail. YouTube is cool for the moment and seems like it's forever, but will everything we see on it today be there even next year, much less in 104 years? Hardly.
Meanwhile, last week I was asked to pull 13,000 feet of original 16mm film that had sat untouched in our vaults since 1965 and estimate what it would take to transfer it to video so the government could study it.
It's 45 years old and still viable...and viewable. I doubt 104 years from now much of anything we see today will be around.
Resa on April 11, 2010 at 11:02 AM
What song is playing in this video?
OscarPhone on April 11, 2010 at 11:29 AM
One thing I noticed throughout is that men turn and look at the front of the trolley like there is a martian riding it. Obviously the camera was mounted kind of conspicuously on the front of the trolley.
Commenter "Koblog", just above, is pointing out a real problem with digital files. With the fast moving technology will we be able to view our present day records of everyday life of this sort in as little as 50 years? Some jobs for my clients that have been archived to CDs are now inaccessible after just a few years since being stored. Bad burn? Bad substrate? Who knows. Thankfully they are obsolete but they ARE gone never to be seen again. Our tribal knowledge is disappearing into digital dust.
Ray on April 11, 2010 at 11:44 AM
My first visit to San Francisco was in June, 1953. I was sent to Parks Air Force Base for basic training in the Air Force. A dazzling moment occurred in a theater on Market Street (same area as in the film) where I saw a stripper for the first time. She had lights on her nipples and was able to rotate each of them in different directions simultaneously.
You can take the boy out of the country but - - -.
peterike on April 11, 2010 at 11:52 AM
People wonder about the "horse exhaust." To give you a sense of it, the book "Gotham: A History of New York City" reports about horses in the 19th century in New York City: "forty thousand of them, who each working day generated some four hundred tons of manure, twenty thousand gallons of urine, and almost two hundred carcasses."
Yes, they did die by the hundreds a day, collapsing right in the street. The good old days? Not if you were a horse.
kathy gill on April 11, 2010 at 01:20 PM
(1) edh, these are cable cars, not electric street cars.
(2) cookie, need links/documentation for the claims re 1st 35mm film and 1906 date; the Library of Congress says 1905: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?papr:2:./temp/~ammem_KwQh::
(3) What's noticeably different is relative population density (low), the fact that most pedestrians etc are males (and most whose faces are visible appear to be white), and the (relatively slow) pace of life. (Which is what happens when you walk more than drive places and when cars are slow. To the person who said the "speed limit" was 5mph, the LOC says the cable car was traveling about 10 mph; see link above.) And Market Street doesn't feel that wide today. :-)