The first photo published in a newspaper, in 1848 (2023) | Hacker News Reader

The first photo published in a newspaper, in 1848 (2023)

phsne.org

64 pointsgeuis26 comments

The opening line was funny, because the Wall Street Journal famously had no photos long into the color photo era of newspapers. When did they add them? Sometime in the late 90s/2000s?

Then again, financial news doesn't really lend itself to photojournalism. A photo isn't going to make the story of a bankruptcy or merger more believable. The rest of the media would show an exasperated trader on the day of a market crash, but at the level of traders some will benefit from a bull market and others will benefit from a bear. So it's just pointless showing the photo.

I always liked the hand drawings of people referred to in the stories.

If we could get rid of useless stock photos, the world would be a better place. An article about headaches doesn't need a picture of someone with a headache. WE KNOW WHAT A HEADACHE IS. An article about someone arrested doesn't need a picture of a generic crime scene. An article about Facebook doesn't need a photo of a monitor at an angle showing Facebook.

But apparently it drives engagement because people can't sustain their focus on text-only media?

To get around this problem , I personally use a ON/Off extension and only load images if article "...is interesting enough ..." But yes, lots of images only have a very weak usefulness ....

What's the extension, if you don't mind?

I'd love an extension that classifies images and somehow blocks stock photos or keeps anything that's not a photo like charts and graphs. For crime and police stories, not that I regularly stumble upon those, I want to see the real crime scene or the real perp, but not a stock photo of a police tape or a judge's gavel. If everything is "off", I wouldn't know what I'm missing.

Just turn off Auto Load Images in Netscape.

Instructions here: https://www.ou.edu/class/webstudy/n4/old/N_Auto_Image_Loadin...

Help, I'm now stuck in the 90s. Or at least give me some stock tips or something.

Buy Apple.

And that cheeky little online book store that Jeff Bezos dude is running from his parents' garage: Keep your day job, but also make time to go over there in person and figure out a way to give him all of your money for as long as he'll take it. He'll want to keep calling all of the shots and that's fine. Let him.

Instead of useless stock photos we now have useless AI generated photos.

True, but some sites, especially the smaller ones, make fun artistic AI images in a certain style with some quirky elements thrown in. It's not drawn by a human, but the prompt for good images that I personally like (or tolerate, at least) is usually way more creative than the search query for the boring stock image ever was. If the stock image was a judge's gavel, the AI image would, for example, be a judge's gavel threatening the hidden accomplices of the accused that the article is trying to allude to. It may be in an 8-bit style if it's for cybercrime perpetrated by a nation state. Just a random example that I haven't seen, but it's much more fun than a shitty stock photo. Useless, of course, but gets a "hah" from me once in a while. And it makes stock photo companies die.

Without researching, I would say the 2000s. They held off for a long time. As you suggest, it was a somewhat stodgy paper for ages that didn't really need photos prior to getting into more "lifestyle" and such topics later.

Cook’s Illustrated continued to have black-and-white photos in the inside of the magazine up until the late 2010s.

It seemed to be a stylistic choice that kept the focus on the cooking lore and knowledge rather than making the magazine about food porn. Their “cooking tips” section continues to be drawn in pen-and-ink style.

RE ".... the Wall Street Journal famously had no photos long into...."

Made me think of how I dislike articles, " often from newspapers " that seem to add (often several) photos only weekly related to article content when in my opinion only a few ( 1 or 2 ) are useful. I use a Image on/off extension, and only load images when I'm reading an article and it seems "... interesting enough ..." A side effect of such a browser extension is it reduces PC .resources. I also sometimes save a page with out images ..

"I always liked the hand drawings of people referred to in the stories."

I did too. It was distinctive, tasteful, and understated. The style is called Hedcut:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedcut

Any French sleuths in the house that can geolocate that street? There is partial visibility of the signage for a chocolate factory. (Just curious.)

p.s. AI assisted search to the rescue: "The factory visible in the photo was located in the 11th arrondissement, near the intersection of rue Saint-Maur-Popincourt and rue du Faubourg-du-Temple."

link has pic of the same location today: https://marinaamaral.substack.com/p/the-first-photo-of-an-in...

Wikipedia says [0] it's rue Saint-Maur-Popincourt, and from this article [1] it says it was taken from 92 Rue du Faubourg du Temple. Going there with Google Street Maps and rotating to look to rue Saint-Maur, seems feasible.

  0: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Barricades_rue_Saint-Maur._Avant_l%27attaque,_25_juin_1848._Apr%C3%A8s_l%E2%80%99attaque,_26_juin_1848.jpg
  1: https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/paris-reportage/premiere-photo-barricade-histoire

Thanks for that link.

I've seen this photo before but never with any historical context, other than its significance as a photography milestone.

That site explains the context of it as a news photo relatively well.

Although that link doesn't actually have the picture of it today, looking at street view's history mode, what seems to have been the "Fabrique Chocolat" building (it's chimney stack is kinda distinctive, even if it was modified at some point, presumably when an extra story was added) was demolished circa 2015/2016.

Hopefully this line noise goes to the right place: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8707602,2.3734964,3a,75y,261...

> Although that link doesn't actually have the picture of it today

?? Works for me. It's the second pic right after the 1848 one. See "The same place today:"

The chocolate factory is the building right after the white building with orange sign in the modern version. Same exact silhouett. So that building in Paris is almost 200 years old.

I think we agree on which building it is. However the street view link I made should show that building there in 2015, then if you look at newer images it spends a few years as an empty space then it’s now a modern building.

Edit: I have no idea how well these deep links to old street views actually work but here are a few of them:

2015: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8707604,2.3734989,3a,75y,271...

2016: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8707572,2.3734939,3a,75y,269...

2024: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8707802,2.3735089,3a,75y,271...

"It would be difficult for modern readers to accept the text-only version of a newspaper."

I can think of few things that would give me more pleasure. Perhaps I am not sufficiently "modern."

> The published image was likely an inked engraving from the original photograph.

Unfortunately the site has no picture of the published newspaper print of the engraving of the photograph.

the photos by kite in early 1900s are more amazing to me

https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2014/01/15/26015255...

1906 "Ruins of San Francisco, 2,000 feet above San Francisco Bay overlooking the waterfront"

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/01/14/07823u-1-edit_cu...

a 49-pound camera raised above the bay with a train of Conyne kites

Those are impressive! It's worth noting that the photographic technology had advanced considerably between 1848 and 1906.

The exposure time of these kite photographs must have been quite short, given the obvious instability of the platform. They're very detailed, nonetheless.

Am I right in thinking that the picture provided with the blog post is the actual photo and not the inked engraving?

My first immediate thought when I saw the title "...first photo published in a newspaper..." was to image a newspaper photo with obvious dots or their proper name "Halftones"

A few googles reveal much detail about the process including that it was used up to 1990s

They say it was likely an "inked engraving", not a halftone. Presumably created by hand. So it is a bit debatable whether we should call it a photo or just an engraving, made from a photo reference. (We wouldn't call an oil painting a photo even if it was created from a photo reference.)

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