Category: 141 R

In the early 1900s, there was major competition in the transatlantic passenger trade between the two leading lines in the business: Cunard and White Star. In 1906 and 1907, Cunard completed the construction of the Mauretania & the Lusitania who both set speed records crossing the Atlantic Ocean. In response to this, White Star set out to build 3 large sister ships that would be known for their comfort over their speed: The Olympic, Titanic & Britannic.

The most well known of these is of course the Titanic. After 2 years of construction, the Titanic was finally ready to embark on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York across the Atlantic Ocean. Containing 840 cabins, a swimming pool, turkish baths, a gymnasium and many other extravagant amenities for first class passengers, the Titanic was the most luxurious cruise ship in the world at the time. Second class cabins were comparable to first class on most other similar ships at the time. With 2224 passengers including many wealthy and important people, the Titanic departed from Southampton on April 10th 1912.

The Titanic never made it to New York. Despite at least 6 iceberg warnings throughout the day leading up to the ship’s tragic demise, an iceberg was spotted ahead of the Titanic, directly in its path. Spotted too late to avoid a collision, the engines of the ship were reversed and the boat was turned, but only 30 seconds after the iceberg was noticed, the side of the Titanic scraped alongside it. Having torn a massive gash into the side of the ship, ripping open 6 compartments, there was no way the “unsinkable” ship would survive. The Titanic could only survive 4 flooded compartments.

At 2:20 AM on April 15th, 1912, the Titanic sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, killing over 1500 passengers. Only 31% of people on board survived.

A major reason so many people lost their lives when the Titanic sank can be traced back to issues surrounding lifeboats. Firstly, the Titanic was equipped to carry a total of 64 lifeboats, but the decision was made to only carry 20 onboard in order to not clutter the decks. This was above the legal requirements. Additionally, a lifeboat drill the day before had been cancelled, so the crew was not sure if the ship’s davits could handle filled lifeboats. They could. Because of this combined with confusion around the ‘women and children first’ rule, as well as an overall disorganized and haphazard evacuation, most lifeboats were launched with fewer than half their capacities.

Although the SS Californian was very close to the Titanic when it sank, they did not respond to distress flares and decided to ignore them. They had turned off their wireless for the night and could not be reached. Had they responded, many of the lives lost could have been saved. The RMS Carpathia came to the surviving passenger’s rescue. Nearly 2 hours after the Titanic sank, the ship arrived to save a little over 700 passengers that made it into lifeboats.

Sources

https://allthatsinteresting.com/titanic-survivors

https://titanicfacts.net/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb3UUwc-TBc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41B_BlwKS6U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqbsrj6-FgM

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/unsinkable-titanic-sinks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHJ8DwXlFyQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pywFRpEcZA

Essentially all motion picture depicts the illusion of motion by displaying multiple pictures that appear in rapid succession.

The foundation of motion picture technology can be brought back to Eadweard Muybridge’s zoetrope & zoogyroscope, which both showed the illusion of a horse in motion by spinning multiple pictures. These pictures were taken by setting up multiple cameras that would be triggered one after the other in rapid succession by a tripwire set off by the horse running by.

Kinetograph & Kinetoscope

Working in Thomas Edison’s lab, William K. L. Dickson developed a tool that would allow multiple pictures to be taken in rapid succession without needing multiple cameras; the kinetograph. The kinetograph used rapid intermittent (stop & go) film movement to take motion pictures.

To show the movies shot on the kinetograph, they also developed the kinetoscope. The kinetoscope was an early motion picture exhibition device that allowed one viewer at a time to watch the movie through a peephole at the top of the device.

Kinetoscopes were quite successful and many ‘kinetoscope parlours’ opened all over America. Kinetoscope parlours were a place people could go to view the short films. These could almost be considered the very first precursor to movie theatres.

As much as the kinetograph/kinetoscope was revolutionary in the history of film, it had quite a few drawbacks. Firstly, it was too big and heavy to move, so everything had to be shot inside a studio. Second, it required a huge amount of light, which limited the time of day to shoot. Editing was not possible, so every movie was one take. Finally, only one person was able to view the films at a time, which meant people often had to wait in line a while to view the film.

The Lumière Brothers & The Cinématographe

The next development in motion pictures was developed by Auguste and Louis Lumière. The cinématographe, meaning “writing with movement,” was able to make and project motion picture. The cinématographe was better than the kinetograph in multiple ways: it was compact and light enough to carry, required no electricity, and most importantly, projected film.

On December 28th, 1895, The Lumière Brothers had a screening of 10 short films in Paris. This event was a hit and popularized cinema. The genre of movies the brothers produced was named “actualités” which means ‘commonplace occurrences’. Films of people leaving a factory or off-boarding a train, a baby having lunch, etc.

Although nowadays we would get bored quite quickly with this genre, these films of everyday occurrences were very successful at the time. The novelty eventually wore off and people wanted to see more. This is when storylines had to come into motion pictures.

George Méliès

George Méliès was a magician by trade who made paramount developments in film editing and effects. His movies are considered to be the first to contain stories as well as science fiction. He came up with multiple editing techniques known as ‘in-camera effects’ including double exposure, split-screen, and matting. His most successful and well known to this day film was “A Trip To The Moon” which ran a whopping 14 minutes long (a long movie for the time).

Sources

https://www.theaterseatstore.com/blog/history-of-motion-picture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKSmcmueTbA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFkSjdaqbyE

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pickford-early-history-motion-pictures/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8is28gAOTc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7ZHd1xU2w8&list=PL2vrmieg9tO3PwHdLO9_PC5zXIBglsWPE&index=5

The Confederation in 1867 marked the formation of Canada as a country. Consisting only of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec until 1870 when Manitoba joined. In 1871, British Columbia also joined the country, but with the condition that a transcontinental railway be built within 10 years.

Despite some controversy surrounding the government at the beginning leading to major delays in construction, in 1880 a group of Scottish Canadian businessmen formed a viable syndicate to get the construction started, and the CPR railway company was officially founded in 1881.

That same year, construction began in various locations that would eventually meet up along the railway. Since there was such a delay in beginning construction, they had to show BC that the railway was coming so that they would not leave the country, so they started construction in Port Moody heading east along the Fraser Canyon towards the Rockies. The Fraser Canyon was treacherous and incredibly dangerous for the railway workers. Many workers lost their lives along the way. Meanwhile, construction in the prairies went smoothly and seamlessly because of the easy flat terrain, regularly beating records for number of miles built in one day.

Finally, on November 7th, 1885, the last spike was driven, combining the eastern and western parts of the railway in Craigellachie, BC. This marked the official completion of the CP railway. In July of 1886, the first passenger train arrived in Port Moody from Montreal. The railway was incredibly important in the settlement and population of western Canada. CP sold many plots of cheap land and went to great measures to get people from eastern Canada and Europe to move.

Injustices

It is simply a question of alternatives: Either you must have this (Chinese) labour or you can’t have the railway.

Prime Minister John A. MacDonald

There were unfortunately many injustices surrounding the construction of the railway that have only much more recently come into the light and been acknowledged. Much of the railway that goes through British Columbia was built by illegally imported Chinese labourers. Approximately 15,000 men were brought to work on the construction of the railway, over 600 of which died from various causes including the dangerous working conditions they were subjected to, drowning, disease, and much more. Chinese workers were paid on average $1/day (not including food or gear), while caucasian workers were paid on average $2-2.50/day including food and accommodations. Additionally, Chinese workers were assigned the most difficult and most dangerous work. It is also important to note that most of the railway was built on stolen indigenous land.

Sources

https://cpconnectingcanada.ca/

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-pacific-railway

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/multiculturalism-anti-racism/chinese-legacy-bc/history/building-the-railway

https://canada.constructconnect.com/Leaders2017/chinese-workers.html

https://cpconnectingcanada.ca/the-history-of-the-cp-logo/

Blind literacy has always been a problem, but it used to be a much bigger issue than it is today. At the beginning of the 19th century, the only reading option for the blind was a system invented by Valentin Haüy, founder of the Royal Institute for Blind Youth (Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles) in Paris. Haüy’s system consisted of embossed versions of normal letters. Although the idea of embossing letters was an important development in blind literacy at the time, it was difficult to read and made it practically impossible for the blind to write. It was said to be “talking to the fingers with the language of the eyes.”

Night Writing

A part of Napoleon’s army, Charles Barbier witnessed many soldiers killed when trying to read maps and letters at night, being exposed by the lights they were using to see. In an attempt to create a way for soldiers to read at night without light, he invented night writing. Night writing was a 12 dot system of raised dots that could be read by the fingers.

When presented with Barbier’s night writing system, the government was not interested in using it for the military. Convinced that it was a good idea and could be used elsewhere, he brought his system to the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, where Louis Braille happened to be a student.

Louis Braille

Louis Braille tragically lost his sight in an accident when he was 3 years old. Playing in his father’s leather workshop, an awl slipped from his grip and landed in his eye. Despite the best medical care available at the time, the infection eventually spread to his other eye and left him completely blind.

A very good student and intelligent boy, Braille was offered a scholarship to study at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. While he was a student there, Charles Barbier visited and shared his night writing system with the school. Braille saw potential in what Barbier presented and decided to work to improve it. He identified a few issues with the night writing system; the absence of punctuation or numbers, the 12 dot cells were too large to be read with a single touch, and the phonetic nature of the system left little room for orthography.

Louis Braille finished refining Barbier’s night writing system at the age of 15, later publishing books on how to use his system as well as a few revisions of the system. Braille’s system contained 6 dots instead of 12, making it small enough to be read with the single touch of a finger. Braille and his peers used the Braille writing system during his time at the institute. He continued to teach it at the school when he got older, but the system was not officially adopted by the school until 2 years after his death.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_writing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille

https://www.historytoday.com/louis-braille-and-night-writer

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Braille-writing-system

Baroque architecture is directly linked to the counter-reformation; the movement of the Catholic Church to fight against the reformation. The architecture of the time was meant to serve as a visible statement of the wealth and power of the Church. Unique for its exploration of form, light and dark, and dramatic intensity, baroque architecture incredibly detailed and grandiose, often including massive gardens, plazas and courtyards.

Italy

Baroque architecture began in Rome before making its way throughout Europe. Many Italian architects of the time are known for their work in baroque architecture.

The first example of Italian baroque architecture is Carlo Maderno’s Santa Susanna. Like most early baroque architecture, Santa Susanna is a catholic church located in Rome. Carlo Maderno was hired to remodel the facade of the building, as the church already existed long before the baroque period.

Another great example of baroque architecture in Italy is Santi Luca e Martina. Originally a simple rectangular structure, it was renovated in the baroque period by Pietro Da Cortona.

The grandiosity of Baroque architecture didn’t stop at the outside facades. The interiors were even grander. On the inside, massive open spaces with walls and ceilings adorned in intricate paintings and filled with incredible sculptures.

France

French Baroque architecture is marked by large curved forms, twisted columns, high domes, and complicated shapes. It was often considered to be more restrained than the architecture found throughout the rest of Europe at the time.

The greatest and most well-known example of Baroque architecture in France is the palace of Versailles. The palace is also the greatest example of secular Baroque architecture. It was designed for Louis XIV by Louis Le Vau and was meant to glorify France as well as show the power and greatness of the King. The palace of Versailles is massive: 700 rooms and 2,000 acres of gardens, all filled with lavish decorations.

Sources

https://bettybaroque.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/santa-susanna/

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Baroque_Architecture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santi_Luca_e_Martina

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/architecture-of-the-baroque-period/

Pigments are powdered forms of colour that can be suspended in various mediums and then be applied to a surface in painting. In the beginning, pigments came from nature: minerals, plants, animals. Alchemists were also able to chemically manipulate and combine different elements to create pigments not directly available from nature. Nowadays, we often use artificially manufactured pigments because they are both cheaper and safer. Many natural pigments are very toxic, and generally very expensive.

Some Common Pigments Used In The Renaissance

Red

Vermilion is a vibrant red pigment made by grinding up cinnabar, a mercury sulphide that is very toxic. Mining cinnabar was very expensive and dangerous because of its toxicity. They eventually discovered how to make a synthetic version of vermilion with alchemy.

Carmine came from carminic acid, found in cochineal bugs. They would boil the dried insects in ammonia to extract the carminic acid responsible for the red colour. Carmine is still commonly used today as a dye in many products including some foods.

Blue

Ultramarine was the most expensive blue, so painters would use it sparingly and often reserved it for the clothing of central figures, especially the Virgin Mary. It was made by grinding up the mineral lapis lazuri.

Green

Verdigris, made from copper (ii) acetate was the most commonly used green at the time. It was the most vibrant option all the way until the 19th century.

Yellow

Lead-tin Yellow was a commonly used yellow pigment during the Renaissance until it was completely replaced by Naples Yellow. It was often used alongside green and earth coloured pigments to create foliage.

Sources

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/artist-paints/renaissance-colour-palette.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermilion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdigris

http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/overview/pbsnyellow.html

Pottery is one of the oldest inventions that is still made and used today in relatively the same way: molded from clay, fired at high temperatures and used as containers for food or water.

Around 10,000 years ago, people began settling down from the nomadic lifestyle and planting crops. Plants need water, so they had to find a way to water their crops since irrigation didn’t come along until much later on. Baskets were common for gathering, but wouldn’t work for transporting water. In order to make something that would work, they needed a material that was easily accessible, moldable, and relatively light in weight: clay. It was abundant and perfect for what they needed. As well as using the pots for transporting water, they also used them for storage of grains, dairy, and other products.

Pottery is one of the easier things to study from the prehistoric era. The longevity of pots means that many pots are still around nowadays. The first pots were very simple. They were made by stacking rings of clay on top of each other, smoothing out the clay, and firing them in a hole underneath a fire—the very first kiln!

The Pottery Wheel

In the beginning, making pots was slow. They had to coil and shape the pots completely by hand, and making a single pot would take quite a while. To increase speed and efficiency, they eventually developed the first pottery wheel around 3,000 BC. The “Slow Wheel,” as can be assumed, was quite slow—although an improvement from the previous method used. A few hundred years later, the “Fast Wheel” was developed. They used heavier stones that could be kicked to make them turn. The use of heavier weight allowed for centrifugal force to be established, allowing the wheels to spin much faster. A major improvement in speed and efficiency!

Sources

https://home.howstuffworks.com/green-living/pottery1.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery

https://www.britannica.com/art/pottery/Western-pottery

https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-invention-of-pottery-171345

https://www.ancient.eu/pottery/

https://ourpastimes.com/the-history-of-pottery-wheels-12181261.html

https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-neolithic-period/the-skarpsalling-pot/what-was-the-pottery-used-for/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter%27s_wheel