cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13232383

Breathtaking colorized video from 1896 of around the world

Set to chill instrumental music. Paris, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Geneva, Kyoto, London, Giza, New York, Germany, Lyon, Marseille, etc.

  • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Totally worth the watch. It’s so fascinating to see the differences, but more so the similarities, between then and now.

    Even though that age had its share of war, sorrow, infirmity, and so on, I have to wonder if there wasn’t a sense of optimism from all of the rapid progress in science and technology. I doubt any of these people saw a world war coming in just two decades and a shakeup of the world order, the death of empires, and so forth.

    One of my hobbies is collecting pocket watches and my favorite, a ladies Elgin in an ornate gold plated case, was manufactured about a decade before these films were made. It is wild to think this watch could have been worn by someone in these films and then surviving so many years and so much change yet still ticking away and keeping time to this day.

    • Shelena@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      That is really cool! Especially with the watches. I was hoping there would be some video of the city my great grandparents lived in. It would be nice to be able to see what their life was like. Maybe I might even see them without knowing it, as I am not sure what they looked like.

  • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The cities look SO MUCH nicer without cars. More open, less crowded (probably because of a much lower population, but there’s way more space), and it’s likely a whole lot quieter.

    Not sure about air quality because they had basically no regulations on industrial pollution, but I can’t imagine it would be all that bad when away from the factories.

    I wish we could just get rid of cars, honestly.

    Edit: I’d never thought about firemen using horse-drawn carriages to get around to fight fires, but it makes perfect sense. It’s just funny to see!

  • siipale@sopuli.xyz
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    9 months ago

    It’s not very well colorized. I assume it’s not made by hand. Maybe some AI tool. It looks mostly good enough so only the errors should be fixed by hand.

    I’m not sure how accurate the colors themselves are. Looks good to me but I would imagine selecting historically accurate colors for different objects, clothes et cetera would require quite a bit of research.