Category Archives: history

when core memory was king

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. When I first joined the Business Information Systems (BIS) section of Bell in 1966, 64,000 bytes of memory was huge. Today, of course that amount is so tiny you could not begin to load a modern day operating system … Continue reading →

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where were you 33 years ago?

Posted on April 28, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. I was living here in Toronto on April 26, 1986 when I heard the ghastly news that a cataclysmic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant threatened to end life on earth as we knew it. The plant was … Continue reading →

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shine a light on me

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. Projectors predate both photography and electricity. Called magic lanterns, they were often used by both magicians and charlatans. There are even people today who collect magic lanterns and slides (the Magic Lantern Society was formed about the same time … Continue reading →

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Notre-Dame de Paris

Posted on April 20, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. We were all shocked to hear and see the terrible fire that severely damaged this world renown church over the past week. PHSC member Harold Staats sent me an 1880s photograph of the famous cathedral (seen above left). Harold … Continue reading →

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we are old

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Robert

Toronto In 1925, when this photograph was taken, photography was less than a century  old. Fredrick Brigden and his wife had emigrated here in the 1870s from England. He was an engraver by trade and established a small engraving firm here … Continue reading →

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photographs indoors

Posted on April 15, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. Can you imagine a media so insensitive and cameras so slow that a special technique was needed to show amateurs how they could take photos indoors at night. And worse, the resulting negatives and prints were black and white … Continue reading →

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photo engraving

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. Have you ever wondered how photographs ended up in magazines and newspapers, or why it took so long, or why colour was so sparse? The short answer is expense and technology. The earliest books used actual prints tipped in. … Continue reading →

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Light Painting Photography

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. Light Painting Photography has a long history. The relative insensitivity of glass plates and film readily lent them to this form of art. It was not unusual for professional photographers to “paint” a scene with a series of flash … Continue reading →

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words, words, words

Posted on April 8, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. I put our first website online over two decades ago on April, 1996. A few years ago, in 2006 or 7, I began an investigation of means to simplify maintenance and updates to our web site so it would … Continue reading →

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walk on the web site

Posted on April 5, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. My title of this post is with apologies to musician Lou Reid and Author the late Nelson Algren (Walk on the Wild Side). The world wide web (WWW), conceived by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was presented  in 1989 using the … Continue reading →

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