16th-Century Amsterdam Stunningly Visualized with 3D Animation

in Art, History | March 5th, 2012

The Ams­ter­dam Muse­um teamed up with the Dutch cre­ative agency Plu­sOne to cre­ate a series of videos for the new Ams­ter­dam DNA exhi­bi­tion — an exhi­bi­tion that offers a three-dimen­sion­al 45-minute jour­ney through Ams­ter­dam’s his­to­ry. Plu­sOne cre­at­ed sev­en videos in total. The clip above comes from the sec­ond film called Revolt Against King and Church, and it obvi­ous­ly brings you back to Ams­ter­dam in the 16th cen­tu­ry. The clip below offers an aes­thet­ic intro­duc­tion to the exhi­bi­tion itself. h/t The Atlantic

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Futurist Ray Kurzweil, 17 Years Old, Appears on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1965)

in History, Technology | February 28th, 2012

Ray Kurzweil — he’s the futur­ist of our time, a prophet of tech­nol­o­gy who fore­sees a day when we will achieve Sin­gu­lar­i­ty, a moment when humans will enjoy super­in­tel­li­gence and longer life expectan­cies (per­haps even immor­tal­i­ty) thanks to rapid tech­no­log­i­cal advances. It’s heady stuff, and you can learn more about it by watch­ing his open­ing speech at the first Exec­u­tive Pro­gram at Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty.

Now we take you back to 1965, when Kurzweil was­n’t yet a futur­ist. Only 17 years old, he was a wun­derkind, a high school stu­dent immersed in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence who tin­kered away, and even­tu­al­ly fig­ured out how to pro­gram a com­put­er to pro­duce orig­i­nal musi­cal com­po­si­tions. When the pro­duc­ers of I’ve Got a Secret dis­cov­ered his tal­ents, they brought the young Kurzweil on the show. And the rest you can watch on the video­tape above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

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Princeton v. Yale, 1903: The Oldest College Football Game on Film

in Film, History | February 23rd, 2012

You can thank Thomas Edi­son and his motion pic­ture cam­era for many things: Bike Tricks Caught on Film in 1899; Footage of Mark Twain from 1909; The World’s First (and Slight­ly Scan­dalous) Hand-Tint­ed Motion Pic­ture (1895); The First Kiss in Cin­e­ma, 1896; and now this — footage of the 1903 Prince­ton v. Yale foot­ball game. The two teams were unde­feat­ed, and 50,000 spec­ta­tors were on hand. The video starts with the play­ers tak­ing the field (Prince­ton first, Yale sec­ond) and some panoram­ic views of Yale’s sta­di­um. Then (around the 2:00 mark) we get to the high­lights of the game.

The clip above is appar­ent­ly the old­est col­le­giate foot­ball footage sur­viv­ing today. And, in case you’re keep­ing score, Prince­ton won the game 11–6.

But if you’re count­ing the num­ber of Free Cours­es pro­vid­ed by the two uni­ver­si­ties, we have the score at 38–1, with Yale com­ing out way on top.

via Retro­naut and the Reel Mudd

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Remembering John Glenn’s Historic Space Flight, 50 Years Ago Today

in History | February 20th, 2012

On this day a half cen­tu­ry ago, Mer­cury Astro­naut John Glenn became the first Amer­i­can to orbit the Earth. On the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 20, 1962, an anx­ious nation watched as Glenn climbed into his cramped Friend­ship 7 space cap­sule and was pro­pelled by an Atlas 6 rock­et high above the atmos­phere. He cir­cled the Earth three times before re-enter­ing the atmos­phere and splash­ing down in the Atlantic Ocean. As the vet­er­an space pro­gram reporter John Noble Wil­ford wrote last week in The New York Times, “Per­haps no oth­er spaceflight–all 4 hours, 55 min­utes and 23 sec­onds of it–has been fol­lowed by so many with such par­a­lyz­ing appre­hen­sion.”

You can get a sense of the dra­ma and excite­ment of that day by watch­ing the news­reel above, and by read­ing Wil­ford’s inter­est­ing piece in the Times. Also, NASA has put togeth­er an inter­ac­tive online fea­ture on the mis­sion. At a time when Amer­i­ca’s manned space pro­gram depends on Russ­ian space­craft to car­ry astro­nauts to and from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, it’s all the more poignant to look back on the day 50 years ago when Glenn became, as writer Tom Wolfe put it, “the last true nation­al hero Amer­i­ca has ever had.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

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A Brief, Animated Introduction to Thomas Edison (and Nikola Tesla)

in Animation, History, Technology | February 15th, 2012

Last year, Jere­mi­ah War­ren cel­e­brat­ed the 154th birth­day of Niko­la Tes­la by cre­at­ing (in less than 36 hours) a short, ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to Tes­la’s work, which con­tributed to the birth of com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty. Now War­ren turns to Thomas Edi­son, the great inven­tor, who gave us the phono­graph, the motion pic­ture cam­era, the long-last­ing elec­tric light bulb, among oth­er inven­tions. Hold­ing 1,093 US patents in his name, Edi­son is appar­ent­ly the fourth most pro­lif­ic inven­tor in his­to­ry. And, it’s worth not­ing, he once employed Tes­la before lat­er becom­ing his rival.

In times past, we have high­light­ed Edis­on’s tech­nol­o­gy in action. Don’t miss Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909), Edi­son him­self recit­ing “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in an Ear­ly Voice Record­ing, Bike Tricks Caught on Film Cour­tesy of Mr. Edi­son, and The World’s First (and Slight­ly Scan­dalous) Hand-Tint­ed Motion Pic­ture, anoth­er Edi­son cre­ation.

Want to share intel­li­gent media with friends? Sim­ply fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and we’ll make it a cinch.

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Trotsky, Russian Revolutionary, Makes Debut Performance Before Microphone (1932)

in History, Politics | February 15th, 2012

Many moons ago, we fea­tured a speech by Leon Trot­sky giv­en in his Mex­i­can exile in 1937. Turns out record­ings of his tele­vi­sion address­es go back even fur­ther. The short clip above was record­ed in Den­mark in 1932 and is titled “Trotzky makes debut per­for­mance before micro­phone”. (A lit­tle aside: The clip was pro­duced by Fox Movi­etone News, a news­reel that ran in the U.S. from 1928 to 1963. Would Fox still show some­thing like this today?) In Novem­ber 1932, Trot­sky left his exile in Turkey to accept an invi­ta­tion by the Dan­ish Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Stu­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion to come to Copen­hagen and speak about the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. You can read the text of the speech called “In Defence of Octo­ber” held on Novem­ber 27 here. There are also two impres­sive pho­tos secret­ly tak­en by a pho­to­jour­nal­ist. There was a lot of com­mo­tion sur­round­ing Trot­sky’s trip to Den­mark: the Dan­ish Com­mu­nist Par­ty, con­trolled by Stal­in, staged demon­stra­tions and the Roy­al Fam­i­ly protest­ed against his vis­it — they held Trot­sky respon­si­ble for the vio­lent deaths of their rel­a­tives, the Tsar and his fam­i­ly. Nev­er­the­less, Trot­sky deliv­ered his speech before an audi­ence of about 2,500. The video address was record­ed in Eng­lish two weeks lat­er, on Decem­ber 10, 1932.

To see oth­er famous lead­ers mak­ing their debut per­for­mances, check out Mahat­ma Gand­hi in his First Record­ed Video and Nel­son Mandela’s First-Ever Inter­view.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

 

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The Weird World of Vintage Sports

in Film, History | February 15th, 2012

British Pathé has released an inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of vin­tage news­reel clips high­light­ing ear­ly exper­i­ments in hybrid sports. Some of the feats are dar­ing, oth­ers mere­ly sil­ly. All are fun to watch.

News­reels of this type were an impor­tant part of the movie-going expe­ri­ence in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, often fea­tur­ing cov­er­age of news, enter­tain­ment, cul­ture and sports. Some reels were pack­aged into reg­u­lar­ly appear­ing “cin­emagazines” like Pathé Pic­to­r­i­al, a mov­ing-pic­ture ana­logue of the illus­trat­ed mag­a­zines of the day.

The reel above, shot in Bavaria in 1955, expos­es the “Most Dan­ger­ous Sport in the World.” Motor ski­ing, also known as “motor­ized ski­jor­ing,” involves ski­iers being pulled at high speeds over ice and snow by cars or motor­cy­cles. You can scroll down to watch a few more of our favorites, or access the whole col­lec­tion on YouTube, at the British Pathé Sport­ing His­to­ry chan­nel.

Cycle Skat­ing, Paris, 1923:

Ten­nis on Ice, Amer­i­ca, 1931:

Sum­mer Ski­ing on the Boule­vards, Paris, 1930:

Blimp Water Ski­ing, 1932:

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Disneyland 1957: A Little Stroll Down Memory Lane

in History | February 9th, 2012

It’s more than a theme park. It’s an icon­ic Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion, a sym­bol of an imag­ined Gold­en Age in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, and a site of many good child­hood mem­o­ries. We’re talk­ing about Dis­ney­land. Con­struc­tion began in July 1954 in rur­al Ana­heim, Cal­i­for­nia, and the park opened but a year lat­er in July 1955. And, thanks to this new­ly-cleaned up piece of footage, you can see Walt’s “mag­i­cal park” just a short two years lat­er. The babies in the strollers are like­ly grand­par­ents today. But the park still looks much the same. Dis­ney His­to­ry Insti­tute offers more com­men­tary on the clip here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Disney’s Oscar-Win­ning Adven­tures in Music

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

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