January 24, 1984: The Apple Macintosh Computer Goes on Sale

The “Mac” was the first commercially successful personal computer using a graphical user interface and a mouse.

The Macintosh (branded as Mac since 1997) is a series of personal computers (PCs) designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh computer on January 24, 1984.

This was the first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse. This first model was later renamed to “Macintosh 128K” for uniqueness amongst a populous family of subsequently updated models which are also based on Apple’s same proprietary architecture. Since 1998, Apple has largely phased out the Macintosh name in favor of “Mac”, though the product family has been nicknamed “Mac” or “the Mac” since the development of the first model.

In 1982 Regis McKenna was brought in to shape the marketing and launch of the Macintosh. Later the Regis McKenna team grew to include Jane Anderson, Katie Cadigan and Andy Cunningham, who eventually led the Apple account for the agency. Cunningham and Anderson were the primary authors of the Macintosh launch plan. The launch of the Macintosh pioneered many different tactics that are used today in launching technology products, including the “multiple exclusive,” event marketing, creating a mystique about a product and giving an inside look into a product’s creation.

After the Lisa’s announcement, John Dvorak discussed rumors of a mysterious “MacIntosh” project at Apple in February 1983. The company announced the Macintosh 128K—manufactured at an Apple factory in Fremont, California—in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by a US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, “1984”. It aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, and is now considered a “watershed event” and a “masterpiece”. McKenna called the ad “more successful than the Mac itself.”

Two days after “1984” aired, the Macintosh went on sale, and came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. It was first demonstrated by Steve Jobs in the first of his famous Mac keynote speeches, and though the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, some labeled it a mere “toy.” Because the operating system was designed largely for the GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten. This was a time-consuming task that many software developers chose not to undertake, and could be regarded as a reason for an initial lack of software for the new system.

The de Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle: A One-Man Personal Helicopter From the 1950s

The HZ-1 Aerocycle, also known as the YHO-2 and by the manufacturer’s designation DH-5 Aerocycle, was an American one-man “personal helicopter” developed by the de Lackner Helicopter Company, Mount Vernon, New York, in the mid-1950s.

Originally designated YHO-2 by the U.S. Army, then later re-designated HZ-1 and named “Aerocycle”, the prototype made its first tethered flight on 22 November 1954, with its first free flight taking place in January 1955 at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Over 160 flights totaling more than 15 hours of flight time were conducted, and the results of this early test flight program were considered promising enough that a dozen examples of the type were ordered. Predictions were made that the craft could provide transport to a modern version of the old horse cavalry, providing airborne “eyes and ears” for the Army.

In 1956, the test program was transferred to Fort Eustis, Virginia, where Captain Selmer Sundby took over test-flying duties. The HZ-1 had been designed to be very easy to fly, and early testing indicated that untrained soldiers could learn to operate the craft in less than 20 minutes, and some claiming that only five minutes of instruction were required. In addition, the HZ-1 proved to be faster than other flying platform designs evaluated by the Army. Sundby, however, quickly determined that the craft was much more difficult to fly than had been expected, and would not be safe in the hands of an inexperienced pilot. In addition, the low-mounted rotors proved to be prone to kicking up small rocks and other debris.

Over a series of tethered and free-flying test flights lasting up to 43 minutes, the HZ-1 suffered a pair of accidents. Both crashes occurred under similar conditions – the contra-rotating rotors intermeshed and collided, the blades shattering, causing an immediate loss of control resulting in a crash. Aerodynamic testing was conducted in the full-scale wind tunnel at the Langley Research Center, and it was discovered that the Aerocycle’s forwards speed was limited by an uncontrollable pitching motion, but rotor-tip clearance was always sufficient. The inability to determine the precise cause of the intermeshing, combined with the fact that the “personal lifting device” concept was failing to live up to its expectations, led to the decision to terminate the project.

Sundby was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his test-flying work with the HZ-1, going on to test-fly the H-21 and H-34 helicopters, as well as seeing combat in the Vietnam War before retiring with the rank of colonel.

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January 22, 1970: The Boeing 747 Takes Off on Its First Scheduled Flight From New York to London

Longer than the Wright brothers’ first flight, wider than a boulevard, and with a tail height as tall as a six-story building, the 747 was a revolution in aviation technology and the passenger experience when it entered service on January 22, 1970. With the first flight from New York to London, Pan Am’s Clipper Young America ushered in the jet age’s second phase: the era of wide body aircraft.

Developed by Boeing to maximize seat-mile and ton-mile revenues, the aircraft also extended the golden age of air travel as the 1960s came to a close. With increased capacity and lowered costs, the 747 helped make the air travel experience accessible to middle-class travelers.

Spacious interiors with luxury appointments and enhanced in-flight dining and entertainment experiences, available to first-class and economy passengers alike, served as marketing tools for the airlines that operated the 747. The jumbo jet came to occupy a permanent place in the popular imagination around the world and remains, decades later, a symbol that represents the glamour of air travel in a bygone age.

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Photos of Old English Costumes Dating From ca. 1450 Through the 1870s

Talbot Hughes (1869–1942) was a British painter (of genre, history and landscape), a collector of historical costumes and miniature portraits, and writer on fine art and costume design. He amassed a collection of over 750 historical costumes and accessories, dating from ca. 1450 through the 1870s, which he used as studio props.

In 1910 he sold a small collection of bags to the Victoria and Albert Museum and also donated individual items, including an 1820s frock coat. In 1913, when Hughes decided to put the rest of his collection up for sale, he was offered £5,000 by an American department store who wished to donate it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rather than send his collection abroad, Hughes instead sold it to the department store Harrods in London for £2,500, where it was displayed for three weeks to advertise the store’s own range of women’s contemporary fashions.

After this period, Harrods transferred the collection by donation to the Victoria & Albert Museum, the result of negotiations by the then Director of the V&A, Cecil Harcourt Smith. The collection is still kept at the V&A. Talbot Hughes continued to donate individual items to the Museum up until 1931.

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Inside Wiltshire’s Secret Underground City, the 35 Acre Subterranean Complex Built in the 1950s

In Wiltshire, England, 120ft below the surface, lies Burlington, aka Cold War City - the 35 acre subterranean complex built in the 1950s to house the Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan’s cabinet and 4,000 civil servants in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack.

It was equipped with the second largest telephone exchange in Britain and a BBC studio from where the prime minister could make broadcasts to what remained of the nation. A system of underground power stations would have provided electricity to the 100,000 lamps that lit its streets and guided the way to a pub modeled on the Red Lion in Whitehall.

A spur railway was built inside a tunnel on the main London to Bristol line, linking it to the bunker. It was meant as an escape route for the royal family to flee London in the event of an attack.

The bunker’s very existence was meant to be top secret until it was decommissioned in 2004. Inside, it is like stepping back 50 years. Hundreds of swivel chairs delivered in 1959 are still unpacked. There are boxes of government-issue glass ashtrays, lavatory brushes and civil service tea sets. Pictures of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Grace Kelly are pinned to the walls.

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Extraordinary Ladies’ Shoes Designed by Steven Arpad, 1939

Even in the times of downfall and despair, caught in the aftermath of the Great Depression, on the brink of the World War II, a creative mind can dream of beauty, long for elegance, and invent something utterly stunning. The futuristic collection of ladies’ shoes created by the French designer Steven Arpad (1904–1999) is a perfect, mind-blowing example.

Housed under the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Arpad shoes, ready to wear pairs and unfinished prototypes, look very modern. Embodying the American high style, these little delicate pieces stand strong for elegance and beauty, despite all odds of their times.

Steven Arpad, Budapest-born, moved to Paris as a young man to study fashion and applied arts. He started his career making boutique items for Jean Patou and ultimately for Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, Paquin and Molineux. He designed and made collections before World War II. And before the war also he was under contract to several U.S. shoe firms including Delman and I.Miller.

At the same time he was operating embroidery firms in both Paris and New York. When World War II started, Arpad moved to operate his embroidery firm, open a sportswear house and to do accessories for ready-to-wear designers. He made a big splash during the war years with his retail line of metal-less jewelry, made with lace, braiding, net and passamenerie.

During the years, he has jeweled everything from combs to belts to shoes. He made jeweled snoods when long bobs were popular and brought back the jeweled hatpin during the post-war years. Here are some extraordinary shoes designed by Steven Arpad in 1939.

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20 Historic Photos of USS Recruit, a Dreadnought Battleship Built in Union Square From 1917-1920

USS Recruit was a wooden mockup of a dreadnought battleship constructed by the United States Navy in Manhattan in New York City, as a recruiting tool and training ship during the First World War. Commissioned as if it were a normal vessel of the U.S. Navy and manned by a crew of trainee sailors, Recruit was located in Union Square from 1917 until the end of the war.

The Landship Recruit under construction in Union Square in 1917.

Operating as the U.S. Navy’s headquarters for recruiting in the New York City district, Recruit was a fully rigged battleship, and was operated as a commissioned ship of the U.S. Navy. Under the command of Acting Captain C. F. Pierce and with a complement of thirty-nine bluejackets from the Newport Training Station for crew, Recruit served as a training ship in addition to being a recruiting office. The Navy also offered public access and tours of the ship, allowing civilians to familiarize themselves with how a Navy warship was operated.

The accommodations aboard Recruit included fore and aft examination rooms, full officer’s quarters, a wireless station, a heating and ventilation system that was capable of changing the temperature of the air inside the ship ten times within the span of an hour, and cabins for the accommodation of the sailors of its crew.

Two high cage masts, a conning tower, and a single dummy smokestack matched Recruit’s silhouette to the layout of seagoing U.S. battleships of the time. Three twin turrets contained a total of six wooden versions of 14-inch (360 mm) guns, providing the ship’s ‘main battery’. Ten wooden 5-inch (130 mm) guns in casemates represented the secondary anti-torpedo-boat weaponry of a battleship, while two replicas of one-pounder saluting guns completed the ship's ‘armament’.

After spending over two years in Union Square, the Landship Recruit was decommissioned and dismantled, the Navy intending to move it to Coney Island’s Luna Park, where it would be maintained as a recruiting depot following its success at its Union Square location; Recruit struck its colors on March 16, 1920; The New York Times reported that the “Landship” had helped the U.S. Navy recruit 25,000 men into the service—625 times the size of her own crew, and enough to crew twenty-eight Nevada-class battleships. However, the cost of a move to Coney Island proved to exceed the value of the materials used in the vessel, so following its dismantling it was never reassembled, the materials being most likely reused in local projects.

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Dizzy Dali Dinner: A Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest at Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, California, 1941

A 1941 newsreel of the famous/notorious dizzy dinner given by Salvador Dali in the Bali Room of the Hotel Del Monte, Monterey, California. The event was titled A Surrealistic Night in a Surrealist Forest and it was a fund raiser to help European artists displaced by the Second World War.

 

Transcript: Mr. Salvador Dali gives a party. The Spanish painter of surrealism dresses Mrs. Dali in a unicorn’s head – just to start things off. As hostess, she presides from a red velvet bed. The party is a benefit for refugee artists, and costumes are supposed to represent the guests’ bad dreams. Artist Dali wears ear flaps, representing anatomy. A puzzled guest, Bob Hope, sees the fish course served in satin slippers… presumably the fish is sole. Soldier Jackie Coogan and Mr. Hope see the main course – the party is surrealism, but them frogs is real! [Frogs begin to jump off Bob Hope’s dinner plate...]

It’s also noteworthy that his wife Gala was dressed as a unicorn, lounging on a velvet bed, and that guests – including celebrities like Bob Hope, Alfred Hitchcock, Bing Crosby, and Ginger Rogers – were asked to wear costumes representing their dreams. Details and photographs of the planning and preparations for the party can be found in the short book, “A Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest” by Barbara Briggs-Anderson and Julian P. Graham (2012).

Famous Photograph of Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler Taking a Lunch Break in a London Pub, 1963

Doreen Spooner was the first female staff photographer on a British national newspaper. In a career stretching from the late 1940s to the 1990s, mostly at the Daily Mirror, she became, unintentionally, something of a feminist icon.

Her big break came in 1963 when, during the Profumo affair, she scooped a picture of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies in a London pub, shot from inside the ladies’ loo in murky conditions. Doreen fled before the irate landlord could grab her camera. The photograph made the front pages in the UK and the US – and also made her name.

Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies in Henekey’s Long Bar in Holborn (now called the Cittie of Yorke).

The picture on the front page of Daily Mirror.

Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies taking a break from the trial of society osteopath Stephen Ward at the Old Bailey on July 22, 1963. (Photo by Doreen Spooner/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

“Any Mummers Allowed In?” – Vintage Photos of Mummers Wear Their “False Faces” in Newfoundland and Labrador

Mummering used to be a tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador during the twelve nights of Christmas. People dressed up in old clothes, doilies, underwear, pretty much anything they found around the house, or at the houses of friends and neighbors, in order to become even more unrecognizable.

Mummers stuffed their costumes, covered their faces and changed their walk and voices, then went from house to house, knocking on doors to ask if they’re allowed in for a skuff (dance), a scoff (food) and a drink. Once inside, the hosts tried to guess the mummer’s identities and only when correctly identified, their masks came off.

When all mummers had been revealed, strangers became friends again and food and drink were finished together before the group traveled on to the next home.

Unfortunately, the tradition eventually turned sour and even violent, which caused the practice to be banned by the government in 1861. And although people in rural areas secretly continued to mummer up at Christmas time, there came a time when it really wasn’t common practice anymore to let masked strangers into your house.

Surprisingly, mummering began to take off again in the early 1980s, after a folk song about the practice became popular in Newfoundland. The tradition, now having outgrown its association with violence, was introduced to a younger generation and these days, St. John’s in Newfoundland still celebrates the Mummers Parade.

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Rare and Amazing Color Photographs of Preparations on the American Homefront

Color photography was first pioneered in the mid-19th century, but the processes for capturing and reproducing color images were time consuming and difficult. The advent of the Autochrome process, developed by French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière in the early 20th century, made color photography more widely accessible, even to amateur photographers.

That said, when the First World War began in 1914, by comparison to black and white image capture, color photography was still relatively rare. As such, most documentation of the Great War that we see today is in black and white.

There were, however, a handful of photographers working in color. One of those was American Charles C. Zoller, a Rochester, New York-based furniture dealer. In the days leading up to the U.S. entry into the Great War in 1917, and in the remaining days of that war, Zoller captured many images of preparations on the American homefront. Here are some:

Red Cross nurses, 1917.

Two nurses and child dressed as “Uncle Sam” in a World War I Support Parade in Pasadena, California, 1917.

Children in costumes with flags at Jones Square Park in Rochester, New York, 1918.

World War I Support Parade, 1917.

World War I Support Parade in Los Angeles, 1917.

Nurses, 1917.

World War I Support Parade in Los Angeles.

(Photos by Charles C. Zoller, courtesy of the George Eastman Museum, via PBS)