AMAZING 1906 San Francisco Street Scene

[ARCHINSTL]

Take 7 minutes and watch this Youtube link below the words - it's amazing!
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NO TRAFFIC LIGHTS & NO RULES - Just Courtesy!
This is a fascinating 7 minute movie. A camera was mounted on the front of a cable car 105 years ago (1906). Perhaps the oldest "home movie" that you will ever see! Look at the hats the ladies were wearing and the long dresses. Some of the cars had the steering wheels on the right side. I wonder when they standardized on the left ? Sure were still a lot of horse drawn vehicles in use. Mass transit looked like the way to get around. Looks like everybody had the right of way.

Watch the beginning carefully. At the 33 second mark and immediately after an oncoming trolley clears the screen, a well dressed policeman walks across the street from left to right. Notice his right hand that he's carrying a truncheon (26 inch police baton) and although he appears walking his beat, he looks ready to use it. Imagine the police of today walking down the street carrying a 26 inch club in their hand...???

This film was "lost" for many years. It was the first 35mm film ever. It was taken by camera mounted on the front of a cable car. The number of automobiles is staggering for 1906. The clock tower at the end of Market Street, San Francisco at the Embarcadero wharf is still there. How many "street cleaning" people were employed to pick up after the horses ? Talk about going green !

This film was originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were issued!).
> > > It was filmed only four days before the Great California Earthquake of April 18th 1906 and shipped by train to NY for processing. < < <

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NINOxRxze9k

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The preceding was sent to me by a nephew; following is my reply to him:
Bill -
Amazing the aplomb with which people and cars and horse-drawn wagons cut immediately in front of the cable car! Talk about jaywalking! And judging from how many people were looking at the front of the cable car and running precipitously close to it, I wonder if there was some sign on it announcing the moving picture camera?
There is a regular electric streetcar in one segment.*
I enjoyed seeing the suspension movement of the cars as they bounced along and across the tracks. Frankly, there seemed to be more automobiles on the streets than I would have imagined for 1906.
Boy, talk about public transportation running every few seconds!

This was originally broadcast on 60 Minutes last October; Morley Safer was the narrator.
Fascinating! I'm going to put it on our Tercel Club site.
Tom
* Trivia: Many of San Fran's current "modern" streetcars are the very ones that graced our STL streets in the '40s and '50s. True! They bought 'em and restored them in various colors - I think of the originating cities. The first time I saw one in a film I just flipped - it was like looking at a clone of the old Public Service trolleys we used to take from Grand and Vandeventer up to the old Sportsmens Park to watch the Cardinals! Same yellowish and red combination!

[Petros]

what a great piece of footage! A historical artifact. It would be fun to have it digiatally enhanced with color added to it.

Several impressions: look how slow all of the moving vehicles go. Just think, without rules or traffic lines, or signals, of all the revenue the local municipalities were missing out on by not issuing traffic tickets (they had not been invented yet). Of course then there was not even an income tax! Notice how slim everyone is, not an overweight person to be seen. That is because most people still walked to their destinations, which by the looks of it was not any slower than taking a car, bus or trolley anyway. I wonder what the camera rig looked like, it appears many noticed it on the trolley and stared at it out of curiosity. Or perhaps not a trolley but a flat car with the camera set up on it.

Great find!

[keith]

If you watched the 60 minutes segment on this film, you would have found out the the cars were going in circles to make it appear that there were more cars than there really were. Other than that, it was an authentic scene, but it was not a home movie. It was made for commercial reasons.