SHORPY WEBSITE

By Ben Hardeman

I ran across a very interesting web site recently that has a lot of historic photographs, many of which show Model T Fords back when they were "New" cars. The site is named "Shorpy" after a young boy who is in one of the photographs taken in 1910 of child laborers working in the coal mines around Birmingham, Alabama. The site link is http://www.shorpy.com.

The collection includes over 600 pages of early photographs with some taken as early as the 1850's. There are many photographs from the Civil War, the late decades of the 1800's and a large number taken in the 1920's that include early automobiles and airplanes. Numerous photos of daily life from the depression era also appear on the site. Anyone interested in history, as we in the Model T hobby are, would enjoy browsing through the many pages. On each of the 689 pages, you can scroll down to view about 7 photographs on per page. One very nice feature is that, within the text under each photograph there is a link that will take you to a "full sized" image of the picture. Many of the original negatives were on large format cameras and some of them were from vintage cameras using glass negatives. The small images are about 4" x 5" but the large images can be as large as 16" x 20" on your computer screen which allows you to zoom in to see fantastic detail.

Enjoy the images below. If you do go to the Shorpy website, and start browsing you will not be able to view all of the images in one setting. My voice of experience advises you to keep track of the page numbers of the pages you view so you don't have to go back see some of them again when you time to view some more images. By the way, it is a non-commercial site so you won't be pestered with emails after you visit it.

The photos below were reprinted with permission of shorpy.com. To see more photos in full size, click on the following links to view just a few of the intruiging photographs you can find on this site. Hendrick Motor Co. garage, Ford showroom, migrant workers by car, shop class, gasoline alley, advertising on truck, auto polo, 1917-1919 Model T, stockroom, wreck and radiator shop.

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