105 YEAR OLD FILM CLIP...Awesome!
This is really worth a look, I am amazed that nobody was in an accident !!
Get ready for a cable car ride in 1906 San Francisco!
This film was "lost" for many years. It is one of the first 35mm films ever shot. It was taken by a camera mounted on the front of a cable car as it travels down the street. You feel as if your really there, standing at the front looking down the street. It's an amazing piece of historic film footage.
The number of automobiles is staggering for 1906. Absolutely amazing! The clock tower at the end of Market Street at the Embarcadero wharf is still standing today, Note 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. Noting the New York trade papers shown in the film that announce what film was showing; how wet the streets are from a recent heavy rainfall, and the length of the shadows (indicating the time of year), Kiehn was able to calculate the film's date based upon records of actual weather conditions that are on historical record. He even calculated when the cars in the film were registered, who owned them, and when the plates were issued!
It turns out that this fim was made only four days before the Great California Earthquake of April 18th, 1906 and shipped by train to NY for processing. Amazing, but true!
No wonder there had to be laws created to regulate driving habits. The traffic shown in this film is insane. It's a good thing they couldn't go very fast.
Look at the hats and the long dresses the ladies are wearing. Some of the cars even have the steering wheels on the right side. It's makes you wonder when they standardized the steering wheel to be on the left. There sure are a lot of horse drawn vehicles still in use. Given the traffic insanity, mass transit looks like the way to get around. Everybody appears to have the right of way.
This is perhaps the oldest "home movie" that you will ever see!
