From 1979. The Betavision came to the Japanese market in ’75.
Ah, progress!
Author Archives: Bob Lawrence
How Far Have We Come?
Sales Sample Postcard
First of all, Benhams, in case you might have forgotten, is about 6 miles NNW of Bristol (at the State Line) in Washington County. To jog your memory further, recall where Benhams Road, Rich Valley Road and Wolf Run Road all come together? Yep, that’s Benhams.
This is a sales sample card from the Nyce Manufacturing Company of Vernfield PA. Notice that they make no claim that the scene above is anywhere near Benhams…it’s just a random shot with an old car in it. You can get 20 different choices for your Chamber of Commerce issue!And, look, if you buy 1000 with your town name in brilliant red ink, you could flog them for a penny each to anyone who wandered into the vicinity and make $2.10, which was nothing to sneeze at in the 1920s. I’m tagging this as 1920s because the stippling of the print which, I think, was attempting to imitate the fine German litho printing that became unavailable to United States publishers at the beginning of WWI.
Nice (haha, pun intended) card in reasonably good shape for being around 90 years old.
Le Caire. Les Pyramides.
This is a very early postcard, possibly lithographed in Germany. The issuing company is Vegnios & Zachos, Cairo & Luxor. Card 401.
I did a search of antique Cairo postcards and, while I saw similar designs, I did not find this one. Bravely I will continue on. Bravely.
Good Day
There are so many comments I could make about this picture, but the more I looked at it, the less snarky I got.Here it is on hot, probably weekend, in August, 1954. Gramps is having a good day. And the charming lady is going to have sunburned toes, if she’s not careful.
No idea where this was taken or who these people are. Such is the case with many of the photos I find in antique stores.
The lady, probably in her twenties in this picture, would be in her 80s now.
The Take-off
Easily one of my favorite airline cards. This great 1947 shot, unattributed except for the “Kodachrome by Trans World Airline” cut line, is of a DC-3.
This same shot, on an earlier card, is noted as a “Color Foto by Trans World Airline”.
It’s a linen-finish card. On the back is the TWA logo and “Litho in U.S.A. – 3-265, 9 -47”
The Cow Card
Yeah, I took one look at this one and thought, “That’s just bizarre. A cow. In a pond. Water streaming from the cow’s mouth, since it has just taken a drink from the, probably, scummy pond water. Looking at, what?”
You would get this from some soi disant friend. What does it mean? I miss you because you remind me of a cow?
It is totally unenhanced. Printed in New York state. Divided back. Postally unused. Holy cow…
Jet America
This is a Jet America kiddie wing, about 3″ tip-to-tip. As you can read here, JA was a West Coast airline that only lasted from 1981 – 1987.
Air France Boeing 707-328
Air France flew this Boeing 707-328 Intercontinental, or one like it, from 1959 to 1979. Boeing made 174 of these.
on the back:
Boeing 707 Intercontinental
(description in French)
The giant 140-ton four-engined intercontinental jet airliner can carry 180 passengers. Flying at 600 m.p.h., this plane operates on all major transocean routes. (in English)
Réf. 21.455/P – 5-62 – Printed in France – I.V.O. Paris-Evian
Parachutist
What we have here, my friends, is a professional parachutist all decked out to leap from the nearest airplane or dirigible.
I hope he tightens all those straps up.
This is a DOPS real photo post card. I am given to believe that DOPS was a real photo postcard paper tradename used by the Ansco Company of Binghampton NY between 1925 and 1942. I’ve cropped the image. The full card is 3.5 x 5.5″ and this image is 3 x 4.5″.
Hoodlums
I don’t know if these guys are mobsters. There is zero information on this card. It’s a real-photo, for sure, but not a Kodak one, so my dating information is useless.
The guy standing is well dressed. Suit with suspenders and one of those fashionable (then) shorty ties. But look how the cuffs are on the sitting guy’s pants. Maybe he wanted to show off his shoes.
The paper on the floor is pretty shabby. It looks like a corner chair that he’s sitting in, or maybe he’s just sitting sideways in a regular chair.
Grim looking guys, though.
Pennsylvania Central Airlines
This rather small stewardess pinback is Pennsylvania Central Airlines (PCA The Capital Airlines).
Here’s the story on PCA. If the dates are correct on that page, it means that this pin dates to a time prior to 1948, when the company became Capital Airlines, dropping the “Pennsylvania” from its name.
I passed this by at first until the owner of the antique store (a building crammed so full of stuff that only narrow, one-person passageways led from one area to the next) pointed it out as airline related. Glad he did.
Piedmont Fantasy
Zoom! Zoom! This fantasy piece in Piedmont livery is about 3″ long and 3″ wingtip to wingtip. Feels like it’s made of base metal. White enamel finish and the style number “307” on the bottom. Note Speedbird’s on the tail.
Here’s a look at the underside (brass wheels! They turn!):
I picked up about 5 of these in a bag of Piedmont stuff at the Tree Streets Yard Sale in Johnson City.
Made my day.
Window, Damaged
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This is in an old, abandoned school in Glade Spring VA.
It must have been a pleasant room, before the ransackers came.
Grumman F11F-1 Tiger
This a Grumman promotional card, not a postcard. It must have been printed in 1962 or later (before that date, this aircraft was just known as the F11F). The Blue Angels flew the F11F from 1957 to 1969. Grumman made 200 of these aircraft. The Wiki citation on the F11F is here.
Here’s what’s on the verso:
(Grumman logo)
BLUE ANGELS FLYING GRUMMAN’S F11 F-1 TIGER
The world’s first supersonic fighter-bomber to employ a “coke-bottle” shaped fuselage, Grumman’s F11F-1 Tiger carries the most modern armament and is currently in service with Navy fleet units all over the world. Powered by a J65 axial-flow turbo-jet with afterburner, the Tiger was designed to fill the Navy’s need for a fast, hard-hitting aircraft with had the ability to carry the fight to the enemy’s home ground. The “coke-bottle”, or indented fuselage (area rule), provides the optimum drag characteristics at sonic speeds. Like all Grumman planes, the Tiger is a reliable, easy to maintain aircraft – one of the major reasons the high flying “Blue Angels,” depicted in a back-to-back formation on this card, use the airplane. The Blue Angels are the Navy’s precision flight demonstration team. Since the team’s inception 13 years ago they have flown Grumman planes exclusively.
Note: the Blue Angels were formed in 1946. “…13 years ago” would put this card at 1959. Somebody lifted some boiler-plate without checking it…
Want to know what (area rule) means? Click here.
Roger. Over and out. “Roger! Roger! Darn, where is that cat?”
Princess Ernestine
This is a borderless chrome postcard, postally unused.
On the back:
PRINCESS ERNESTINE
Princess Ernestine of Cherokee, North Carolina, poses in a modern adaptation of an ancient Cherokee Costume.
copyright date is 1969 Aerial Photography, Inc., Charlotte, N.C.
Pub. by Aerial Photography Services, Inc., P.O. Box 27112, Charlotte N.C. 28208
Printed by Dexter Press, Inc., West Nyack, New York
inventory number is 47031-C
This picture had to have been taken over 42 years ago. There’s a later card I’ve seen with this exact image, but it was dated to 1988.
I did a search on the web for Princess Ernestine and found that her last name is/was Grant. And that’s about all.
Bristol TN/VA: Early parks
In a 1915 municipal report, Bristol included these two parks as being part of Bristol’s system.
This is an early undivided back (1901 – 1907) card. The postmark year is unreadable.
It was mailed to Mr. Jno D Cox, Jonesboro, Tenn. “E.L.C.” mailed it with “will write you right soon” on the front border (you couldn’t put a message on the back of the card in those years). It was published by Caldwell-Sites Co., Bristol, Roanoke and Staunton, Va.
I can’t find Big Creek Park on the map and references to it on the web are few.
This is “Island Park Boat House, Bluff City, Tenn.”
Six of the people in this picture are looking at the camera.
I can conclusively date this card to 1914 by the postmark. There’s no publisher shown, but, in the bottom right on the face there’s the number “65755”.
It was mailed to Mrs. W.H. Roberts Bristol Tenn R.F.D. 1
Her sister mailed it and there’s some writing on the back concerning an upcoming trip.
Tennessee Airways
This postcard shows a Brazilian-made Embraer EMB 110 (?K?) “Bandeirante” (“pioneer” in Portuguese) in Tennessee Airways livery. The airline worked out of Knoxville from 1978 to 1987. Here’s the skinny on this regional carrier.
On the back: TENNESSEE AIRWAYS 18 passenger “Bandeirante” Prop-jet…Meeting Tennessee’s air travel needs with old fashioned courtesy and space age technology…FLYING YOUR WAY!
Printed by L&M Printers, Maryville, TN 37801
Update 01/21/20: The airline was owned by Stuart Adcock, Jr. In 2009, he died in a crash of his Grumman American AA-1B near Fingerville NC.
Piedmont Postcard
A Piedmont Airlines Boeing 737-200. It came rolling out in 1968. Read all about it!
And now you can go read about Piedmont Airlines!
I have heard that TRI was once considered for hub status, but, er, wiser heads prevailed. What? Wiser!?!
Convair Aircraft Postcards
This is the Convair CV-240. You can read all about it here.
It was a workhorse for maybe seven years and then, ta da!
Along came the Convair 880.
“Delta’s modern jet fleet includes the Convair 880 Jetliner…cruises at 615 mph…provides both deluxe first class and jetourist accommodations for 96 passengers. Delta Jets serve the Caribbean and the U.S.A.”
As you can read here, it was a failure.
It’s kind of interesting that I found both these cards on the same day in the same antiques store in downtown Elizabethton TN. Will wonders never cease…
Uncle Bob's Pix 