Tag: clouds

A Long-Ago Sky

How Instantaneous Views changed photography and let us travel to a fixed point in time.

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One-half stereoview, “Winder’s Instantaneous Views, No. 355 Central Avenue, opp. Court St., Cincinnati, O.”

This is genuine time travel: You are looking at a sky in a southern clime taken on the early afternoon of 12 July, 1865. A handwritten paper glued to the reverse provides the exact date. When this fraction of a day was preserved, the Civil War was over but for a few months; this part of the sky was again above the United States, not the Confederacy.

There was a house amongst the trees—its triangular roof and chimney visible mid-left. The sky was bright blue and the clouds were gentle fluffs that, nonetheless, hinted rain. By them the great hot orb of the sun was obscured enough to safely see and photograph. The revolutionary iodized collodion process used by the photographer allowed images to be taken in as little as a few seconds, depending on the light, and this picture probably would have required the briefest of exposures.

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A Peculiar Cloud Attracts Attention

From the Valley Register, Middletown, Maryland, 2 February, 1917.

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“Maintaining Our Supremacy in the Air,” one-half of No. 70 of the “Great War Through the Stereoview,” published by Realistic Travels Ltd. London, circa 1919. Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection.

“A very peculiar white cloud, stretching from the northeast clear across the sky to the southwest, in an otherwise perfectly cloudless sky, attracted great attention from shortly before 7 o’clock last night (Thursday), until 7:30. The cloud was pure white and in the centre of the sky appeared to be about 30 feet wide, tapering down at each end to a point. At the southwestern point, a projection hung down.

“The cloud had the appearance of a huge Zeppelin and some described it that way. Nervous persons declared the cloud had a meaning and portended war. Coming as it did, just when the situation with Germany has become serious, plenty of people associated the strange cloud with war.

“The cloud was really a very peculiar and remarkable sight and large groups of people stood gazing at it for some time. The edges of the cloud had the appearance of a solid mass of roiling smoke. One man said it was the Kaiser’s hand reaching out after Uncle Sam.”

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Full stereoview card.