"Lie further off yet, do not lie so near."
November 13, 2006 11:28 AM   Subscribe

The Broker's Athletic Typewriter. Short film from 1905 showing a secretary taking revenge on her sleazy cmployer.
posted by paduasoy (7 comments total)
 
More early films from the Library of Congress.

And that's "employer," of course.
posted by paduasoy at 11:34 AM on November 13, 2006


That was sufficiently well spliced that it took a couple times around before I caught the precise stop points where they switched to the dummy.

I can imagine folks in 1905 with absolutely no backhistory knowledge of film tricks must have been thrilled and shocked at what to them must have seemed like sorcery.
posted by CynicalKnight at 12:27 PM on November 13, 2006


The NHCM website is full of amazing things. Tracking back from the url in your link leads to this mysterious game. I didn't have time to get very far. Anyone know what's going on or what "course" this is for? (Something to do with GMU?)
posted by imposster at 12:31 PM on November 13, 2006


Oh, actually I just found it.
Magic, Illusion, and Detection (Class Website)
Description

This course explores two simultaneous tendencies in American life at the turn of the last century. On the one hand, the rise of industrialization made Americans fascinated with personal transformation--with self making, with economic mobility, and with the possibility of changing your place in life. This new, modern world highlighted the difference between the real and the fake. In an age of mass copies and new identities, how could you tell the genuine, honest man from the con man? As much as they loved magic and personal transformation, Americans of this era loved detection, and the wide range of new techniques--like fingerprints, mug shots, and criminology generally--designed to pin identity down. The course will also focus on this simultaneous, contradictory fascination with fascination with both self transformation and with stabilizing identity.

The course makes extensive use of this game-like website, which is designed to reproduce some of the ambiguities of historical research itself

posted by imposster at 12:33 PM on November 13, 2006


I wonder if she grew up to be a library volunteer?
posted by taosbat at 3:09 PM on November 13, 2006


Holy crap! I just got back from a trip to San Francisco, and a clip from this film is playing in one of the penny peepshow machines at Musee Mechanique! [warning: sound] I was telling my friends how it must have been scandalous back in the day.
posted by mkhall at 4:04 PM on November 13, 2006


wonderful .. thank you
posted by petsounds at 10:23 PM on November 19, 2006


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