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Glenn Curtiss and the Albany Flyer
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The Wright Brothers first achieved sustained, powered, heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in December 1903. Their first flight was 120 feet for 12 seconds; their fourth and final flight of that day covered 850 feet in 59 seconds. However famous that is now, the flight was barely noticed at the time. Their…
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Phoenixville Phriday: The Pennypacker Tragedy
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Last week we made mention of a railroad tragedy on the Pickering Valley Railroad, where a cow on the tracks led to the death of an engineer. But an 1877 storm led to a much bigger disaster, at the time the most fatal train wreck in Chester County history. On Oct. 4, 1877, a…
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Maps to Swear By, Not At
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Hoxsie is at the age where he has probably forgotten more than he currently knows. And then he’ll run across an old article and the light will go off: “Hey, I used to know that!” For instance, this article from the Schenectady Gazette in 1970 was a reminder that local television personality Jim Fisk,…
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Mann and Anker
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We aren’t very familiar with Mann & Anker (or Mann, Waldman & Co., for that matter), but can only imagine what their store was like in 1898 when Fashion’s Queen held court there and gave her devotees the opportunity to pay her homage. In 1899, both Mann & Anker, “makers of ladies’ garments,” and…
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Phoenixville Phriday: All Caused By A Cow
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Hoxsie was surprised to search through an online archive of California newspapers and find more than a few stories that originated in his newish hometown of Phoenixville, PA. Some were of tragedy, some were of no consequence at all, but all were printed a long way from where they happened. In this case, the…
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The Value of the Telephone (and of Miss Worth)
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Now that we live in a time when it appears that most people feel the need to be engaged in telephone conversations at all moments of the day – while driving a car, while conducting a transaction, while going to the bathroom – it’s perhaps hard for some to imagine that there was a…
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A look inside the offices of the Albany Morning Express
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In its 51 years or so, the Albany Morning Express saw some tremendous changes, which it chronicled in its 50th anniversary coverage. They noted that when they began publication in 1847, the city of Albany contained 45,000 inhabitants, making it the 10th largest city in the United States at the time. There was only…
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Wire Service, Mergenthaler Typesetters and a Lightning Press
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The Albany Morning Press lived through a time of a revolution in newspaper production, and quickly took advantage of the changing technologies, using the newly invented wire services, the Mergenthaler linotype typesetter, and Hoe’s latest presses, not to mention vacuum tubes for moving paper around the office. The telegraph was fairly new to Albany…
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More on the Albany Morning Express
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Continuing the story of the Albany Morning Express, once the city’s premiere newspaper, in circulation, at least. In marking its 50th anniversary in 1897, the paper recounted some interesting points of its own history. After its founding in 1847 by Alfred Stone and Edward Henly, the paper ran for five years with “varying success”…
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The Albany Morning Express
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Since we stumbled onto the topic of the Albany Morning Express and its various successors in interest, all the way down to the lamented Knickerbocker News, we thought we’d dig a little further into what was once Albany’s largest circulation daily. On May 4, 1897, the Express gave a bit of its own history…