Beautiful photos from 1942 show the making of the New York Times

Propaganda?
Well sonny...let me tell you something. Back then, people still loved this nation, still supported police, the military, the constitution and the effort to defeat the enemy, Germany/Italy/Japan.

Or someone that appreciates the tangible and the difference it can make in creating their art.

I have some floppies filled with photos. Care to try and display them?

I also have prints my grandfather made in the late 50s. Still look incredible to me.

@Ranma13 Sure, digital images will probably be viewable in 75 years. . . If the keeper of those images has made certain to upgrade the file format and viewing hardware over the next 7+ decades.

Don't be a digital snob. . . You're like a techno-freak who gloats over his Zip Drives.

"transfer them onto a hard-drive or CDs"

Luckily film and prints have to be transferred nowhere: They're already in the right format to be enjoyed directly by the eye and mind, now and forever.

@lightandaprayer There is no widely-used image format that has ever been released that's no longer viewable by modern software. And in 75 years, you think your film and prints will be viewable unless you store them in a carefully-controlled climate chamber? And I guess you're unaware, but you can still buy Zip drives that work perfectly.

I never said that digital or film was superior. The whole argument is stupid, it's like judging how good food tastes based on what kind of plate it's served on.

@FantasticMrFox - you must be young. Digital media always dies. My slides/negs will probably outlive all my hard drives and flickr as well.

The best way to store digital pictures on a long-lasting medium is to transfert them onto (lot of) punched cards and keep them in (lot of) shoe boxes... ;-)

I shoot both film and digital, and frankly, there are advantages and short-comings to both. Yes, digital is subject to changes in technology and tech-disasters (file corruption, etc.). But, I have spent many hours recovering film from the ravages of age such as fungus, scratching, fading, and other forms of deterioration.

There is a major shortcoming that I see with digital that wasn’t present in the glory days of film. Today, because of the almost total saturation of digital cameras and phone cameras there are more photographs being taken than ever before. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these photos are only presented on social media. These photos are loaded to online viewing sites and then deleted form the photographing device. They are never printed! In the future there will no longer be that box of old photos for the kids to discover in grandma’s attic. For the average person, whether from past years of film or current digital, the only surviving media is the print.

Wow Bizi, a couple of years ago there was an article in the Herald News in Jersey about Carl Schlesinger and the movie, don't know if it was his obituary. I googled for hours and could not find the documentary, so thanks for the link. My grandfather had a printing company in lower Manhattan and my father was a Linotype operator there. I myself would work there during the summers. The funny thing is that when our family moved to New Jersey from Brooklyn Mr Schlesinger was living 2miles away across the river in Rutherford NJ.

Alan, it was 1942!

Smoking was banned in the workplace in the UK in 2007!

Most US states were around the same time

Almost unbelievable that it was so recent.

@HeyItsJoell this hasn't the slightest bit to do with any generation. It doesn't account for pre-millennials doing stupid things like smoking around fuel vapors. Maybe you're just arguing that earlier generations were less smart?

Anyway, the real reason people are overly cautious today isn't [whatever generation comes after yours]. It's because of insurance companies and lawyers. I'm pretty sure that's the answer you would get in the auto racing and industrial safety examples.

It sounds like you're putting down the current 20-something generation just like every generation of middle-aged folks has since the Greeks at least.

Oh My God, taking up for the current 20-somethings, OK You hire them!

They are sadly "Clueless" like they like to say.

web: yes they will be hired and they will be doctors, and engineers and build the world you will grow old and die in.

You are suffering from the "the good ole days" syndrome (music was better, society was better, the culture was better, you could get a pint and a bag of chips for a penny and still-have-change-in-your-pocket, it was all fields around here...)

I bet when you were 20 the old boys thought you were a clueless wet-behind-the ears sap too.

There is nothing as pathetic as grey fat bald old farts moaning about the young. It's usually those people that wasted their youth that do the most moaning.

People caught on fire. That's why they wear nomex and don't smoke anymore.

"There is nothing as pathetic as grey fat bald old farts moaning about the young."

And one day, sooner than you may think, you will be one too. So careful being so condescending towards others.

And one more thing: Maybe the old days were not really better, but at least we had good manners in those days.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I would bet the fuel used in today's racing cars is just a tad bit more flammable than the kerosene in the old Indy 500 cars. :-)

I've got my own thoughts about generational moral decline, but this isn't the place for that -- it says I've only got a little of 700 characters left anyway. :-)

Millennials will fall over dead before they graduate to become Doctors, along with me.

Oh and no House calls , no Hospital visits either. And Oh I Only work 8 hours a day 5 days a week maybe, if they do get their degree.

And IF they do get one, there might be a sign in their office that states, Plan ahead please for a appointment, I might not feel like working that day. I might not be there if my Mom does not wake me up on time. She is having trouble walking down the steps to the basement lately. Sorry.

I personally believe we are in Big trouble down the road. But won't bother me. I will be dead, and maybe you will have a appointment with one of them!

@ daddyo, The actual fuel used by the IRL is a blend of about 98 percent ethanol and 2 percent denaturant. The exact composition includes a small amount of high-octane racing fuel. The fuel for today's Indy cars has an octane rating of 113, compared with methanol's 107.

Indy switched in 1965 to burning alcohol which is less volatile than the gasoline that was previously used.

http://thetandd.com/death-a-grim-chapter-in-storied-history-of-indianapolis/article_20b768d6-fa66-59fb-89e9-d81f2ca35f3b.html

I'm curious what generation HeyItsJoel is a member of. Because every generation since the 1960s (ungrateful hippie protesters) has been complained about as the Absolute Death of Civilization This Time for Real.

Misguided baby boom Hippies wasting their lives on drugs instead of joining the Army, later turned into the 1980s materialistic Yuppies, you have the lazy Gen X slackers, the Millennials...shouldn't we already be living in caves by now?

I feel confident that the vast majority of professional commercial and documentary photographers today have the talent and skills to shoot a story like this.

aris : is it not obvious what they were doing?

1) Compositor producing galley type
2) Man stood in piles of discarded paper (its an office, people produce waste)
3) Man examining negative of photo: possibly for photo-mechanical transfer to printing plate
4) Another compositor producing galley type
5) Man checking prints of maps against an atlas
6) Style guide above hot metal type to remind compositors of house-style rules
7) Men taking break in print room
8) Loading/Unloading printing plates onto press
9) Men in print room watching papers roll off the press
10) Collating/folding machine

Thank you BadScience. For those of us who didn't grow up in that era, no, it is not obvious what is going on. Now...off to Google to find out what is galley type.

I don't know about "bad manners", but thanks to LensBeginner's suggestion, I went to the original site and having the captions greatly enhanced the story that is being told.

I know. I live in a poorer country where we're bound to also find a great number of artisans and manual laborers.

It is just the majestic industrial scenarios that are missing. It is not very photogenic going to a power station just to get the same repeated image of a couple of supervisors seated at their monitoring stations ;)

Sebastiao Salgado, a brilliant Brazilian photographer produced a book, the product of over 3 years' work, called "Workers" to recognize and celebrate the state of worker around the world. There is a review of the book in this link: http://origins.osu.edu/sites/origins.osu.edu/files/origins-archive/Volume2Issue3Article7.pdf.

Salgado himself is an amazing photographer, and there is an excellent full-length documentary about him called "Salt of the Earth" produced by his son. Not only is it a documentation of a gifted and driven photographer, it is a story of the child getting to know his own father after a childhood of absence.
Here is a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OivMlWXtWpY

I have "O Sal da Terra" on DVD. Truly remarkable documentary. The most moving sub-text in the feature is the life arch between inherinting an arid piece of land from his family operations as cattle breeders and the reforestation promoted by Sebastião and his wife that gave back to the place the luxurious "mata atlântica" it once had.