These Autochrome Photos from the 1920s and '30s Resulted in a Painting-Like Quality That Not Even Today's Best Instagram Filters Can Replicate

The method used to make these dreamy photographs resulted in a painting-like quality that not even today's best Instagram filters can replicate.

Auguste and Louis Lumière were pioneers in photography. Legend has it that in 1895, when they premiered their first motion picture film of a train entering a station, audiences fled in terror, fearing they would be flattened by a "moving" train.

By 1907 they had turned their sights to color photography, inventing the first camera capable of capturing life in color—the Autochrome Lumière.

Autochromes owe much of this stylized look to the method in which photos were made. Using a glass plate coated with dyed red, green, and blue potato starches, a layer of emulsion was then added to the plate. These plates were then inserted into the camera, which had a lens that filtered the light that passed through the glass.

Because autochrome photography required a much longer exposure time than the film used to capture black-and-white images, subjects had to be still or slow moving.

The technique became popular at National Geographic for its ability to showcase different parts of the world in vibrant color. Autochromes were so widely used that the magazine now has one of the largest collections in the world, second only to Albert Kahn's Archive of the Planet.

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Walt Disney’s Early Sketches of Mickey Mouse, ca. 1928

The mouse has made it a long way from just one pair of pants and an old boat to having his own theme park.

(Image: Walt Disney Family Foundation)

November 17th, 1928 a mouse was born who would become famous all around the world. Most of us grew up with this most well-known mouse, but indeed he was actually born in our grandparent’s lifetime. Mickey Mouse, one of Walt Disney’s earliest and yet most well-known creations has become a globally recognized symbol of children’s cartoons.

Some statistics suggest that Mickey is more widely recognized than even Santa Claus and is a frequent choice for presidential election write-ins. Ever since Steamboat Willie premiered on television, Mickey has been an unstoppable and timeless success.

55 Amazing Colorized Photos Document Everyday Life of China in the Early 20th Century

Here is a collection of rare and amazing colorized photos from Okinawa Soba that shows everyday life of China in the early 20th century.

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37 Amazing Photos Show Students in Their Dorm Rooms From Between the 1900s and 1910s

What did a dorm room look like over 100 years ago? How about students in this era? Just check these amazing photos to see.

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30 Fascinating Color Photographs That Capture Street Scenes of Queens, New York in the 1960s

Queens is the easternmost and largest in area of the five boroughs of New York City. It is geographically adjacent to the borough of Brooklyn at the southwestern end of Long Island, and to Nassau County further east on Long Island; in addition, Queens shares water borders with the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx.

Whether you're a history buff, love photography or maybe feel like you were born in the wrong decade, these photos of Queens in the 1960s offer a glimpse into city life during another era.

Queens/ Ridgewood: Fresh Pond Road and Putnam Avenue, ca. 1960s.

Queens/ Ridgewood: Cypress Avenue and Putnam Avenue, October 1969.

Queens/ Sunnyside: Greenpoint Avenue and 45th Street, 1969.

Queens/ Jackson Heights: 80th Street and Northern Boulevard, ca. 1960s.

Queens/ Sunnyside: Greenpoint Avenue off 45th Street, 1969.

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25 Interesting Vintage Pictures of Dog Carts and Milk Women in Belgium from the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

You are on the outskirts of the town. The country women you meet here is on their way home to a farm several miles out. When they left home early morning those big, shiny copper cans were full of milk.

This mode of transporting milk from the dairy to the city customers is passing out of fashion; the woman's daughters will hardly follow the picturesque custom. For years and years, it was nearly universal, and the foreigners in Belgium were always delighted with the quaintness of theses little cars drawn by just such big dogs with shaggy, yellowish hair and wolf-like ears.

One of the most famous dog stories ever written was Ouida's "Dog of Flanders" --- a tale of devoted friendship between a Flemish boy and the faithful beast that went with him in this very way, carrying copper cans of fresh milk to Antwerp. It is a story which has been read all around the world --- a classic in its way, translated into many different languages.

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The First Ronald Clown for McDonald’s, 1963

Back when McDonald’s was a startup, Coca Cola was releasing its first diet drink, and clowns were not scary.

Willard Scott was the personality behind Bozo the Clown on WRC-TV in Washington DC in the early 1960’s. At the time clowns were a fun and energetic, happy and carefree character, perfect for creating a fun filled atmosphere for children, and Bozo the clown was the most popular children’s show on TV.

McDonald’s approached Scott and he performed three television acts as Ronald McDonald the clown. The character grew to be McDonald’s mascot and even had a whole animated TV series about McDonaldland, though McDonald’s has since relegated Ronald to just a mascot with no TV show, and now focuses on Ronald McDonald housing for parents with critically sick children.

30 Wonderful Color Photos Document Everyday Life of England in 1975

A South Wales-based photographer named left--handed who shot these wonderful photos while traveling in his honeymoon vacation in May 1975. The pictures show everyday life of London, Kent, Ludlow, Brighton, Eastbourne, Cornwall, Whitstable, Canterbury,...

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These Candid Photographs Taken by Servicemen Show How Young U.S Soldiers Saw Life in Wartime Vietnam

The photographs are almost banal.

In contrast to most images of a war that still reverberates decades later, they show soldiers lazing, showing off their squalid jungle living quarters, discovering the charm of the Vietnamese children they encounter, reveling in a rare ocean swim. There is nothing remotely as chilling as much of the classic Vietnam War photography, no shots like Nick Ut’s of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing from a napalm bombing or Eddie Adams’s shot of a Saigon police chief firing a bullet into the head of a Viet Cong prisoner.

Yet these photographs were taken not by professionals but by young grunts barely out of high school. Grinning wide-eyed at this strange land where they had been sent, often against their will, in circumstances they did not fully understand, with little foreboding of what might be in store, their photographs of ordinary wartime days have a special poignancy.

A U.S.O. performance at Fire Base Rawlings. Tay Ninh Province, Vietnam. November 1969. (David Fahey)

Larry Diesburg taking a smoking break after filling sandbags near Binh Long, Vietnam. (Larry Diesburg)

A Vietnamese boy’s daily work, along highway QL-19 near An Khe Pass. (James Alan Jenkins)

Light at night used to detect Viet Cong activity during the Tet offensive. Ninh Hoa, Vietnam. 1968. (Gene Bailey)

The Quang Tri River seen from a Huey helicopter. Vietnam. (Richard Lynghaug)

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Pictures of Marilyn Monroe Meeting Queen Elizabeth II in London, 1956

A meeting of two matriarchs, you have to wonder what the two were actually thinking of each other.

Two of the most widely recognized women of their times who couldn’t be more different. They met in London for the Royal Film Premier to watch The Battle of River Plate. Monroe was not in the film, but it was the much anticipated true story of a naval battle, which is why it had been chosen for the Royal Film Premier.

The Queen was of course at the event, and nearly everyone who came stood in line to meet her, as naturally Monroe did as well. Back story aside, the event has given us an unforgettable picture of two seemingly incongruous characters in a congenial meeting.

At the time, both Monroe and Queen Elizabeth II were just 30 years old. The Queen had ascended to the throne at the age of 25 following the death of her father, King George VI. Monroe had just finished filming The Prince and the Showgirl in London; the film premiered in June 1957.

Unfortunately, Monroe passed away just a few years later, in 1962, at the age of 36. This would be the only time these two extremely different types of royalty—a monarch and an American icon—would ever meet in front of millions of onlookers and cameras.

Lost Marvels of Revolution-Era Russian Theater: Haunting Photographs From a 1908 Fantasy Play Performed in Moscow

The Blue Bird is a 1908 play by Belgian playwright and poet Maurice Maeterlinck. It premiered on 30 September 1908 at Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, and was presented on Broadway in 1910. The play has been adapted for several films and a TV series.

The story is about a girl called Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl seeking happiness, represented by The Blue Bird of Happiness, aided by the good fairy Bérylune.

The photographs of the actors are all that remain of this 1908 premiere of Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird. A descriptive play-by-play of the performance can be found in the 1920 book The Russian Theater Under the Revolution by Oliver Sayler, but all other images of this art noveau-inspired production have been lost to time.

According to historians well versed on the Moscow Art Theatre, which at the time was considered one of the most vital dramatic arts communities in the world, anything connected with the 1908 production was destroyed once WWI commenced in 1914, with the exception of these photographs. Despite their age and lack of color, they are remarkably vivid. While they are all stunning, the images of actress Maria Germanova (who played the mythical fairy in The Blue Bird and is best known for her role in the silent film based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel Ana Karenina) are particularly arresting.

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"The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat" – This Silent Film by the Lumière Brothers in 1895 About a Train Really Cause Audiences to Stampede

In 1890, having made a fortune manufacturing plates for still photographs, Antoine Lumière bought a huge 90 hectare / 222 acre plot of land between the station and the waterfront in La Ciotat.

The Villa Lumiere at La CiotatOn this land, which he called the Clos des Plagues, he built a magnificent 36 room château, the Villa Lumière, pictured as it was in the early 19th century, as a summer residence for his family (which was based in Lyon for the rest of the year).

Meanwhile Antoine's two sons, Auguste and Louis, were busy developing their own new invention which they called the "cinématographe": a motion picture camera which also functioned as a developer and projector. They lodged the patent for this device on 30 March 1895 and shot numerous short films, all roughly 50 seconds long, in and around La Ciotat during this period.

These include the famous L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat), one of the world's first movies. It records a steam train, pictured top left, pulling into La Ciotat from Marseille, with the Lumière Brothers' mother Joséphine (in a tartan cape) and Louis' daughter Suzanne on the platform.

Like most of the Lumières' early shorts, the 50-second silent film consists of a single, unedited real-time view, with the camera carefully positioned so that the train seems to be coming almost directly towards it (according to legend, the first viewers, imagining themselves to be in the path of the locomotive, ducked for cover).

On the centennial celebration of the film's release, film critic Hellmuth Karasek wrote in Der Spiegel:

One short film had a particularly lasting impact; yes, it caused fear, terror, even panic.... It was the film L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de la Ciotat (Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat Station).... Although the cinematographic train was dashing toward the crowded audience in flickering black and white (not in natural colors and natural dimensions), and although the only sound accompanying it was the monotonous clatter of the projector's sprockets engaging into the film's perforation, the spectators felt physically threatened and panicked."

Adorable Photos Show That Dogs Have Always Been Children's Best Friends From Long Time Ago

These adorable were taken in the late 19th century that show dogs has always been children's best friend from long time ago.

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