Variations on a Theme

These four post cards have similar pictures of the same view. You have even seen this scene in the previous posts of May 22nd and 31st. I have 17 different post cards with this picture, or a slight variation of it, on the front. I chose this one because it has a very sharp image on it. It is beautifully colored, too.

My understanding is that the printing of color post cards of this era were that the photographs were printed on post card stock in black and white. The publishers sent to the printers a color palate and notes to the printers telling them what colors the various parts of the photograph were supposed to be. This post card looks like it could have been printed in color directly onto the card stock. The borders between the colors are sharp and the shades are subtle. It is a tribute to the technology of the day! Of course, this is a picture of the Incline on the Mt. Lowe Railway. Just like in the picture from May 31st, this is the cable car waiting to go up the mountain. Just like in the picture from May 31st, they are waiting to have their picture taken. Unlike that post card, you can’t see the photographer, but his camera is set up at the very bottom of the picture, a wee bit to the right of center. He might be standing in front of the camera with a paper taking notes (perhaps the names of his subjects so he can post their pictures later with their names attached). At the bottom left of the card is the waiting area and the trolley car that brought the tourists up the hill.

As I turn the post card over I notice that it is from the pre-March 1, 1907 era. That is all that I can tell from the back of the card. The words “POST CARD” and a logo are in the top middle of the back, but I haven’t been able to identify the publisher from these indicators, yet. I do have several other post cards of other scenes with a similar logo on them. But, like this card, no solid information to lead me to the publisher or the printer. Holding the card in my hand, I can feel that the surface is uneven. This card has been embossed. The picture on the front has been raised so that the card is sort of three dimensional. These other three cards are pictures of the same scene. I am including them so that you can see that in the 17 cards of this scene, there are differences. On this second card you can see that it was not a very busy day. There is no one sitting in the cable car. There are two trolley cars sitting at the waiting area, but there are no tourists. Perhaps they were told to wait to the side while this picture of the Incline was being taken. Perhaps they are all at the top already.

On the back of the card, one can tell that, again, this is from the early era. The date on the front and the postmark tell us that this was written and mailed in 1905, May 25th to be exact. That makes this card 107 years and 9 days old today!! The message on the front says “Why don’t you write to your Western friends?” It is being sent to West Lynn, Mass. This city is northeast of Boston very close to Nahant Bay. If one were to drive from Boston to Lynn and keep going past Lynn about twice the distance, one would come to the town where I live for a year from September 1972 to September 1973: Ipswich.

In this third picture we are starting to gather more tourists.

There are three of them sitting in the cable car waiting to have their pictures taken and to be whisked away to the top of the Incline. It is hard to know that there is a lodge up there waiting for the tourists. But, up on the first bump to the right of where the cable car is taking these tourists, there is another little bump. This is Echo Lodge. The message on the front of the card reads, “I went up Mt. Lowe about a week ago and got back alive as you see. I’m hoping those ‘cow sheds’ will not be as full of fleas as cow-sheds usually are. If they are, I think I will camp on the lawn. I’m coming home to work (not rest) in a week – that is if I get there without drowning, etc. Edna Child…” As I turn the card over, not only do I notice that it was mailed on September 5, 1906,

I see that this is being sent to Mr. Earle L. Menker at 354 S. 10th Street in San Jose, California. When I look up that address I see that it is right next to San Jose State University. If the residents of the house sit on their front steps, they will see Campus Village B of the University. San Jose State University began San José State University was founded in 1857 as Minns' Evening Normal School, and is the oldest public school of higher education in the state. The university now offers more than 134 bachelor's and master's degrees with 110 concentrations. See this page for more information: http://www.sjsu.edu/about_sjsu/history/timeline/ This final post card for this blog post is a very good one.

It, too, is a very sharp picture (like the first one above). The 8 people in the picture are rather relaxed and are looking at a camera. But, they are looking up at the camera that took this picture, not at the one that takes the touristy pictures. Hopefully, you can see the American flag attached to the top of the car. There were 45 states because this picture was taken pre-March 1, 1907. You will see that when we turn the card over. Theodore Roosevelt was in office and he objected to the plan that Oklahoma residents had for entering the Union as two different States, a State of Sequoyah and a State of Oklahoma. Roosevelt insisted that the Oklahoma Indian Territory come in as a single unified state, or not at all. Utah had become the 45th US State on 4 January 1896 and Oklahoma finally became the 46th US State on 16 November 1907. You can read more here: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_US_states_were_there_in_1905#ixzz1t68X1Ns6 If you look at the top of the Incline, we can finally see the Echo Lodge. It is the point on the bump to the right of the top of the Incline. As I look at the post card with my giant magnifying glass, I can see that the powerhouse and other buildings are right at the top of the Incline.

This card was published by M. Rider (1901 to 1915) in Los Angeles but printed in Germany. Germany had developed great technology for printing color post cards and it was cheaper for the Americans to ship orders over there (not by plane, either) and get them back then it was to have them printed in the US. This situation eventually changed – just before World War One.