Visit to the Past

I blogged about the this card back on April 11, 2011. I talked about the Detroit Photographic turnign into the Detroit Publishing Company. It is a Santa Fe train crossing the desert from Las Vega to Los Angeles.

Today, I have in my possession a copy of this card. This is the first time that I have seen a post card in my collection that has been so obviously copied. You can see that it was probably printed in the "White Border" era. If you look carefully at the edges you can see an iside border (from the original card) and an outside border. The same number from the orginal card is also in the lower left hand corner: 5512.

This is literally, a copy. It looks like someone put this postcard on a stand and took a picture of it then started printing copies of their own post cards. Whoever it was, was very smart. While today we would be scandalized by such ruthless defiance of the copyright laws, back then, this was rather commonplace. The original was from pre-March 7, 1907. The white border era began when the printers discovered that they could save ink by adding a nice, white border around their pictures. This one has a white border and some serrated edges. It looks like it was connected to other cards that you could tear off an mail either several over time to the same person, or several at the same time to many people.

There is only one thing that might indicate who the company was that copied the original. In the section above where the message is to be written is a very "trademark" looking design with the words Post Card incorporated into it. Perhaps the blue dividing line and the two blue squares where the stamp is to be placed are also part of the "trademark". If they are, I have not been able to trace either the printer nor the publisher.