Pessimists Aloud

In the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic San Francisco quickly instituted a mask mandate, when it was repealed there was a countdown in the streets and jubilation as reported on the front page of The San Francisco Examiner. To the right of the report was a piece by Annie Laurie celebrating the moment and lamenting how smiles had been hidden away, she declared the pandemic over and a return of smiling - however not long after this mask rules were put back in place as a spike in flu cases occurred. 'S.F. Feels Good Without Mask - It Hides the Only Thing Worth While - This City Always Has a Smile' - The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, 22 Nov 1918, Fri • Page 9

Did the rise of 19th century technologies - such as radio - lead to an increase in ghostly sightings? That's the question Atlantic writer Derek Thompson asked on Twitter this week and it brought to mind a 1930s piece from the archive titled: Weird, Ghostly and “Supernatural” Antics of the Radio that could hint at an answer (yes!) The 1931 San Francisco Examiner peice consisted of a heavily illustrated two-page spread about fictitious reports of ghostly sounds, prompted by the rise of radio boradcasting. It explored reports of strange sounds eminating from everyday objects - which some thought were supernatural forces - but experts insisted were actually rogue radio waves being picked up by metal objects. Source:

At the end of the 1920s aeroplanes were becoming a more common sight in the skies, in 1928 The New York Times reported on growing public disdain, comparing it to past reactions to transport innovations like the automobile and bicycle. The piece was subtitled “A Skeptical Nation Visits Upon the Airplane the Doubts it Once Felt for the Automobile” explores many of the patterns we see today play out with electric scooters, bicycles and self-driving cars.

146 years ago The New York Times published an article lamenting anti-vaxxers, the piece began: "One might suppose that the popular prejudice against vaccination might have died out by this time, considering it has been practice for nearly a century." Today this statement is as amusing as it is painful, when considering anti-vaxxers remain a relevant movement. It rightly observed that “It seems useless to quote science, and a long and successful practice, against such dense stupidity as this. The ignoramus has a prejudice against the regular practitioner, and, with cruel kindness he kills his friend while trying to protect him against the art of a learned physician” going on to say “In spite of all our boasted progress curious revelations of popular ignorance and superstition are constantly showing us how little advance has been made." It finishes with a prediction “When knowledge is more evenly distributed there will be less of this fantastic and ignorant prejudice” - unfortunately, he was wrong. Source: The New York Times, 1875 https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1875/08/17/79089660.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

This screed against mass-media appeared in a 1953 issue of The New York Times, it was an excerpt from an article written by British novelist J.B. Priestly for The Newstatesman. Today people yearn for the days of unsocial mass-media, but we forget that once mass-media was a strange new cultural influence - Priestly gives some insight into concerns about it at the time. Source: The New York Times, October 4th, 1953 https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/10/04/92749299.html?pageNumber=346

69 days before the Wright Brothers achieved manned flight The New York Times posited it could take between 1 and 10 million years to achieve. The piece chides those experimenting in the field and posits that human ingenuity will never achieve what evolution had done over millions of years. The piece ends implying it is a waste of time and money: "To the ordinary man, it would seem as if effort might be employed more profitably.” 'The Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly' - The New York Times, October 9th, 1903: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1903/10/09/102025405.pdf

These two pieces from the last decade of the 1900s cover two big consumer trends at the time: personal photographs and bicycle riding. Photographs of oneself were popular, as they are now and so was retouching! Photoshop used to mean a literal photography shop where edits were made to photos to enhance beauty, enlarge eyes and reduce bulge - the article lamented this trend for encouraging vanity. The bicycle was blamed by some doctors as causing insanity, often it was women that were the supposed victims and these notions were rooted in socially conservative resistance to women riding bikes.

In 1912 hand mirror use evoked similar reactions to smartphones today, the Chicago Tribune reported: "WOMEN CONSTANTLY WALK INTO DANGER. Accidents which are due to women's passion for looking in mirrors in stores are slight compared with ones which result from the use of the fascinating little hand mirror." Source: Chicago Tribune 08 Sep 1912, Sun • Page 48 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/53610995/chicago-tribune/

♟️ The year is 1859, American Paul Morphy had just defeated Europe's top chess masters leading to a surge of interest among the American public. Scientific American tried to quell the hype, suggesting chess playing was a waste of time that would be better spent outside, the piece stated: "A game of chess does not add a single new fact to the mind; it does not excite a single beautiful thought; nor does it serve a single purpose for polishing and improving the nobler faculties"

It was the first decade of the 1900s, the bicycle was now mainstream and manned flight was still a curious novelty, oh and reading in bed a dysfunctional sin. Sources: Aeroplane Face: http://digital.chipublib.org/digital/collection/examiner/id/12588/ •

'THE AEROPHONE' - The New York Times, March 25, 1878, Page 4 •