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Faces From The Past

March 2023
1min read

Since we are a magazine that relies heavily on illustrative material, we are, of course, most interested in new finds in the field of historical photography. Unfortunately, the invention of the camera postdates our nation’s birth by quite a few years. We have often regretted this; it would be quite wonderful to have photographs of, say, Washington and his aides touring the lines before Yorktown or of Fulton’s Claremont chugging gamely up the Hudson. Now, however, we are delighted to learn that the possibility of obtaining such significant visual documents is not so remote as we had thought. A recent issue of the Photographic Historical Society News has reported an extraordinary breakthrough. Their source, The National Enquirer , the largest feature paper in America, has published a major article featuring a photograph of Jesus Christ. This picture was taken by an Italian monk, a late renaissance man who recently abandoned his studies of ancient church music to invent a camera that captures past sound waves. The machine is about the size of a television set and has an eight-inch viewing screen that has shown pictures of Christ, Pope Pius XII , and —less gripping but still nothing to sniff at—Benito Mussolini. The Enquirer took its story from articles in the English and Italian press but was unable to interview the inventor. He has applied for a patent and, in the meantime, refuses to reveal any technological details. We hope that the patent is quickly granted and anxiously await the arrival of the camera in the New World. We have many assignments for it, especially if it will record the doings of the Founding Fathers.

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Stories published from "December 1973"

Authored by: David Lowe

“I do not admit that a woman can draw like that,” said Degas when he saw one of her pictures

Authored by: Joan Paterson Kerr

OF BALLOONS, THE FIRST AIR-MAIL LETTERS, AND THE EVER-ENTERPRISING FRANKLIN FAMILY

Authored by: Richard M. Ketchum

Clark’s career was like the passage of a meteor—a quick, fiery moment that lit up the heavens for all to see and wonder at, then vanishing in oblivion.

Authored by: Bernard Bailyn

The Most Uncommon Pamphlet of the Revolution

Authored by: Gerald Carson

and grew, and grew, and grew

Authored by: David Flowden

“De railroad bridges’s A sad song in de air…”

Authored by: Kenneth McArdle

FOR SEVEN DECADES OUR EBULLIENT COUSIN INSTRUCTED US ON EVERYTHING: THE BOERS, PROHIBITION, HITLER, CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S FEET, AND THE COMMON CAUSE OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES

Authored by: Bernard A. Weisberger

A TALE OF RECONSTRUCTION
Of the turbulent career of Pinckney B. S. Pinchback, adventurer, operator, and first black governor of Louisiana. He reminds one powerfully, says the author, of the late Adam Clay ton Powell, Jr.

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