Life in the 1800s

James Naismith (November 6, 1861 – November 28, 1939) was a Canadian-born Presbyterian minister who is best known for inventing the game of basketball at a Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA in 1891. This interview of him is from a radio program called "We the People" and was aired on Jan. 31, 1939. Audio has been restored and optimized for maximum clarity. By 1892, basketball had grown so popular on campus that Dennis Horkenbach (editor-in-chief of The Triangle, the Springfield college newspaper) featured it in an article called "A New Game",and there were calls to call this new game "Naismith Ball", but Naismith refused. By 1893, basketball was introduced internationally by the YMCA movement. From Springfield, Naismith went to Denver, where he acquired a medical degree, and in 1898, he joined the University of Kansas faculty at Lawrence. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

Here are three different scenes of public swimming pools (baths) and water slides, all filmed in 1897. I colorized, cleaned up and restored the video as much as possible using AI algorithms. Also added is audio for ambience. Scene 1: Filmed August 22, 1897, at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco, California. Scene 2: Filmed August 1897, at the Lurline Baths in San Francisco, California. Scene 3: Filmed August 22, 1897, at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco, California.

This is the colorized version of the Civil War Veterans Reunion in Jacksonville, Florida, filmed May 6-9, 1914. Some footage was omitted due to it not colorizing very well (for example, too many light glares will cause this). You can find the full-length, unedited black and white version of this video on my channel as well. An estimated one million men served at one point or another in the Confederate military during the Civil War. About 15,000 of them came from Florida, a very significant portion of the sparse, agrarian population. By 1914, fifty years after the war, only about 2,000 actual veterans were still alive and active in the largest interstate veterans group, the United Confederate Veterans Organization. Still, an estimated 48 thousand people came to Jacksonville in May of that year to observe the anniversary and meet the remaining veterans. Florida was the third state to secede from the Union, and the second from the last to rejoin. It was an important source of fish, agricultural products and beef for the Southern war effort, but for the most part Union forces controlled the coastal and the ports throughout the war. There were several minor engagements and the one larger battle, at Olusee in 1864, where a Union advance was thwarted. While that was the last time the north initiated combat in Florida that is not the same as evacuating the state. Interestingly, the war did help Florida grow in later years. Many veterans, from the north and south, who served here found themselves attracted to the state in the 1870’s and 1880's, both because of the climate and because of the agricultural

William Henry Jackson (April 4, 1843 – June 30, 1942) was an American photographer, Civil War veteran, painter, and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. In this interview, recorded on April 3, 1941, Mr. Jackson tells of his experiences about roaming the wild west frontier as he performed his job as a photographer and surveyor. Audio is restored, speed-adjusted and equalized for clarity. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

Filmed on May 10, 1903 in New York, from the Hudson River. I colorized and restored as much of this video as possible utilizing AI/Deep Learning algorithms. Also added is sound ambience. From a moving boat, the film depicts the Hudson River (i.e., North River) shoreline and the piers of lower Manhattan beginning around Fulton Street and extending to Castle Garden and Battery Park. It begins at one of the American Line piers (Pier 14 or 15, opposite Fulton Street) where an American Line steamer, either the "New York" or "Paris," is seen docked. The camera passes one of the Manhattan-to-New Jersey commuter ferries to Jersey City. Proceeding south, the distinct double towers of the Park Row, or Syndicate Building, erected in 1897-98, can be seen in the background. A coastal freighter is next, then Trinity Church appears, to the left of which can be seen the Surety Building, as a tug with a "C" on the stack passes in foreground. Several small steamboats come into view, and the B.T. Babbitt Soap factory at Pier 6 is seen, followed by the Pennsylvania Railroad piers (#5 & #4), with a group of docked railroad car floats, and the Lehigh Valley Railroad piers (#3 & #2), also with car floats. Next are the Bowling Green Building (rectangular, with facade to camera), the Whitehall Building (vertical, thin side to camera), followed by Pennsylvania Railroad Pier #1. Pier A (with a clock tower) is seen with the New York Harbor Police steam boat "Patrol" at its end. The Bowling Green Offices and the Produce Exchange at Bowling Green are visible in the background. The breakwater (sheltered landing) and the New York City Fireboat House appears and the distinctive round structure, Castle Garden, once a fort and immigrant station, but at the time of filming the City Aquarium, comes into view. The camera then pans east along the Battery Park promenade: the Barge Office (with tower) is visible in the distance, and further out the Brooklyn shoreline with the grain elevators at Atlantic Avenue can be seen. This view is continued, with only a minor break in continuity, in the film Panorama of Sky Scrapers and Brooklyn Bridge From the East River. Together they comprise a sweep around the southern tip of Manhattan, from Fulton Street on the Hudson to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Filmed on Broadway and 23rd Street, New York, N.Y. on October 26, 1903. This street level view is of the Broadway side of the Fuller Building near the narrow north corner. Filmed on a very windy day, pedestrians of various descriptions are seen passing by the camera, clutching hats and skirts against the wind. According to some New York City historians, this corner was known as the windiest corner of the city, and in the era of the long skirt, standing on it was considered a good vantage point for a glimpse of a lady's ankle. Policemen would chase away such loungers from the 23rd Street corner, giving rise to the expression "twenty-three skidoo." This video was colorized, speed corrected and restored using AI/Deep Learning.

This is a video filmed in 1930 of a man who was in Ford's Theater when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. He was sitting in what was known as the orchestra section, which was the ground floor seating section. He was also standing on the porch to the Petersen House when Lincoln was carried inside. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

This is a video of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Fire Department racing to a fire on Christmas Day, December 25, 1896. The video was colorized/restored by myself, with audio ambience added, using AI/deep learning.

From October 16-19, 1917, the second largest Civil War Veterans reunion took place at Vicksburg, Mississippi. This was a very large undertaking. It brought together veterans of the Union Army of Tennessee and the Confederate Army of Mississippi. Over 12,000 veterans were accommodated on the battlefield. They were housed, fed and given all other amenities for there comfort. This video was speed-adjusted, restored and optimized. During the Civil War, the city surrendered during the Siege of Vicksburg, after which the Union Army gained control of the entire Mississippi River. The 47-day siege was intended to starve the city into submission. Its location atop a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River proved otherwise impregnable to assault by federal troops. The surrender of Vicksburg by Confederate General John C. Pemberton on July 4, 1863, together with the defeat of General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg the day before, has historically marked the turning point of the Civil War in the Union's favor. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

This is Richard Clarke (15 December 1845 – 5 May 1930), born in Yorkshire, England, who was a United States frontiersman, Pony Express rider, actor, and armed forces member. During his career, Clarke fought alongside George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn against the combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

These are two Civil War veterans, aged 84 and 94, talking about fighting in the Civil War. Filmed in 1929, at the time of the Civil War the two men would have been 16 years old and 26 years old when the war started in 1861. The General Price they mentioned is none other than General Sterling Price: On August 10, 1861, at the Battle of Wilson's Creek outside Springfield, Price’s and McCulloch’s combined force defeated Lyon, forcing the federals’ withdrawal. At Wilson’s Creek, Lyon earned the unenviable distinction of being the first Union general killed in the war. In September, Price marched northward, driving from the border counties Kansas Jayhawkers under the command of James H. Lane. Price then marched to Lexington, where his army besieged and forced the surrender of a 3,500-man fortified garrison of federal troops and Home Guard under James A. Mulligan. Pressed by troops under John C. Frémont, commander of the Department of the West, Price soon retreated into the southern counties, where he attended the “rump session” of the legislature and voted for secession in Neosho. After a brief occupation of central Missouri, Price and his state troops went into winter camp near Springfield, where they transferred into Confederate service and in February withdrew to Arkansas. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

This is the oldest known recording in existence of any U.S. President in history. It was recorded on an Edison wax cylinder in 1889. I restored and re-mastered the audio. The original was extremely degraded, but I eliminated as much of the noise as possible without degrading further the actual voice data. I also enhanced the ambience of the audio to regain as much of the natural overtones as possible, as well as provide an idea of what it actually sounded like if you were in attendance for his speech in 1889.

Filmed in September of 1898 at Camp Wikoff at Montauk Point, Long Island, New York (year says 1897 on video, sorry typo). I colorized and restored this video using AI/deep learning algorithms. Of the thousand and more men who left New York for the Cuban Campaign of the Spanish American War, scarcely three hundred were able to shoulder their rifles to march before the camera on this day at Camp Wikoff. The film shows many of the companies reduced to seven or eight men, yet the American flag and patriotic attitude still stand strong in these courageous soldiers.

This is the original, full length version of the 1914 Civil War Veterans Reunion, filmed on May 6-8, 1914. The video is speed adjusted and optimized for maximum clarity. Reunions of Civil War veterans from both the North and South were a prominent feature of public life in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century. This 1914 silent film records the meeting of 40,000 Confederate veterans in Jacksonville, Florida, nearly a half century after the end of the war. Titles are used to explain each sequence. Aging veterans dance to the music of two fiddlers and gather to parade on foot, by horse, or in cars. Also shown are crowd scenes, general views of the camp with its tents, an emergency medical tent staffed by the Red Cross, and thousands of veterans dining together in a mess tent. Scenes from the Sons of Confederate Veterans Parade include marching bands, a passing electric street car, and the Forrest Cavalry of Tennessee, named after Confederate cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest. An African-American loyal to the Confederacy is shown, as well as F.M. Iremonger, said to be the youngest living Confederate veteran. An estimated one million men served at one point or another in the Confederate military during the Civil War. About 15,000 of them came from Florida, a very significant portion of the sparse, agrarian population.

Filmed on June 1, 1899. The head of the column is just turning into 14th Street from Broadway, the Morton House forming part of the background. Crowds line both sides of the cable car tracks, falling back as the band heading the first division swings around Dead Man's Curve and passes the camera. Chief Devery makes a fine showing, as also do his men, with their white gloves and helmets, shining buttons and spick and span appearance in general. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

This is true story of Al Jennings, a lawyer in the 1800s who turned into a train and bank robber in the 1890s for revenge on the justice system. Finally caught by the law, he was sentenced to life in prison, but later was freed with the help of Senator Mark Hanna (Ohio) and then President of the United States William McKinley. Later, after McKinley was assassinated, Jennings was granted a full pardon by Teddy Roosevelt. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

This 1922 documentary called "A Day With Thomas A. Edison" is about the 74-year-old Edison's collaborations with his staff, conversations with industrial leaders, and supervision of the factory's production line. The majority of the film chronicles Edison's trip to the incandescent light bulb factory and details its manufacturing process. This is the original, full length version.

These are Civil War veterans performing rifle-musket drills at a 1929 reunion. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

Veterans of the Civil War gathering together on May 30, 1930, Memorial Day. At 0:44, one veteran describes the history of celebrating Memorial Day and how his corps commander, John A. Logan, was the key figure involved in starting the tradition. Logan (February 9, 1826 – December 26, 1886) was an American soldier and politician. He served in the Mexican–American War and was a general in the Union Army in the American Civil War. He served the state of Illinois as a State Senator, a Congressman, and a U.S. Senator and was an unsuccessful candidate for Vice President of the United States with James G. Blaine in the election of 1884. As the 3rd Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, he is regarded as the most important figure in the movement to recognize Memorial Day (originally known as Decoration Day) as an official holiday. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts,Thomas A. Watson (January 18, 1854 – December 13, 1934) was a bookkeeper and a carpenter before he found a job more to his liking in the Charles Williams machine shop in Boston. He was then hired by Alexander Graham Bell, who was then a professor at Boston University. This is the story of the birth of the telephone. Watson recalls experiences from his work on the invention of the telephone (1875-1915) and shows instruments and replicas of instruments from the early days of telephony. He relates episodes relating to the work and personality of Alexander Graham Bell and describes events of March 10, 1876, when Bell's call for help after an accident was heard by Watson over a receiver they had been testing. Filmed in 1931. This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.