1905 'dashcam' video, "A Trip Down Market Street"

[thunderw21]

This is from 1905 before the great San Fran. earthquake/fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2MMskdPho

Neat to see video from that long ago, though it's been a mere century since then.


Here's Market Street 36 years later in 1941.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzqs6DF_wGE&feature=fvw

 

[Fletch]

soundtrack

Benny Goodman for 1941...Philip Glass for 1905?! [huh]

 

[Fletch]

Market Before and After the Quake

Here is a reel cutting back and forth between 1905, pre-quake, and 1906, post-quake.

No sound at all. I suggest Vess L. Ossman banjo music if you must have some.

 

[Hamilton_Honey]

Thanks for posting this! It's funny how different it all is and yet the same.

It made me miss the City - and it also made me wish I could snag a couple of the hats I saw...

 

[Fletch]

I was astonished how many automobiles were already in the streets of SF in 1905 - half a continent or more away from the manufacturing centers. Would there have been this many or more in Chicago and New York?

 

[thunderw21]

I was astonished how many automobiles were already in the streets of SF in 1905 - half a continent or more away from the manufacturing centers. Would there have been this many or more in Chicago and New York?

If you notice, most of the vehicles were repeats: one passed the camera as many as 10 times!

 

[ron521]

While the manufacturing centers were in the mid-West, it was common practice to ship a single car to the purchaser by rail. And in a city the size of San Francisco, there would have been dealers for the more popular makes.
The Model T was still in the future, but there were earlier Fords. Oldsmobile was a big name by then, as was Maxwell, Franklin, Hupmobile, White, Stanley and many others.

The first auto to be driven across the continent was a two cylinder, chain driven Winton, and started the trip from San Francisco, in 1903, taking roughly 3 months to reach New York.
It was purchased, used, by a physician who had bet that the state of technology was such that a car could make the trip, while his friends claimed that it was not possible.

There is a great PBS video about this trip called "Horatio's Drive".

 

[Haversack]

Fletch wrote: "I was astonished how many automobiles were already in the streets of SF in 1905 - half a continent or more away from the manufacturing centers."

Not too surprising. The Auto Club of California, (now California State Automobile Association), was founded in San Francisco in 1900. Th first auto show in San Francisco was in 1907. Also there were some auto manufacturers located in the city during the Oughts. All are defunct, swallowed up, or make other things now. (Hall-Scott and Heine-Velox, for example.)

Actually, there was a great deal of heavy industry in San Francisco. The mining booms of the second half of the 19th C. required substantial infrastructure and most of it was built in and around San Francisco. A good part of the US Navy's Pacific Fleet under TR was built about a mile west of me at the Union Iron Works.

Haversack.

 

[Miss 1929]

And it looks like you never could take a left turn off Market easily.

 

[Hamilton_Honey]

And it looks like you never could take a left turn off Market easily.

As we used to say, "Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left in San Francisco!"