Flashback - National Geographic Magazine

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Flashback

Each month, National Geographic features a photograph from our archives in Flashback. Browse through the galleries of historical images for a view into our past.

/flashback/2001/img/2001-12-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-12-FB-60.jpg SMOOTH OPERATORS
"The telephone companies early found that women were temperamentally far better suited to be operators than the boys," wrote F. Barrows Colton. His article "The Miracle of Talking by Telephone" appeared in the October 1937 Geographic, where this early 1880s photograph of a Richmond, Virginia, switchboard was published. Male operators, according to the caption, "'talked back' to customers and were otherwise unsatisfactory, so girls soon replaced them." The women, wrote Colton, were "an instant success...they paved the way for women to enter many other fields of employment."]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-11-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-11-FB-60.jpg PADDING HIS ASSESTS
A bulging coat added bulk to this already sizable Russian coachman, whose photograph was cataloged by the Society in 1925. Gilbert H. Grosvenor's November 1914 article, "Young Russia: The Land of Unlimited Possibilities," had explained 11 years earlier the uniform's rationale. "The drosky drivers wear padded coats that look like great wrappers round their bodies," reads a caption in that story. "The fatter they are the more prosperous and well-fed they are supposed to be, and consequently the more high-priced." This photograph has never before been published in the magazine.]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-10-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-10-FB-60.jpg BRIGHT IDEA
The Cairo night was chased—for a moment—by the light of 6,500 flashbulbs on May 24, 1959. The illumination of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, part of a promotional event by the bulb manufacturer, Sylvania, was triggered with a series of synchronized circuits strung along 14 miles (23 kilometers) of wire. Preparations for the shot took more than a month; a team of 20 men made two sides of the ancient structure bristle with flashlamps attached to four-foot (two- meter) poles wedged between the limestone blocks. This photograph was never before published in the magazine.]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-09-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-09-FB-60.jpg COOKING WITH FRESH VERBS
An Italian immigrant makes an American breakfast aided by instructional materials from the YMCA. In the early decades of the 20th century such newcomers to the United States were encouraged to take "Americanization" classes to speed their assimilation. Day and evening school sessions offered adults subjects including child care, hygiene, housekeeping, English—and courses in eliminating accents once English was learned. This photograph was first published in the April 1918 article "What Is It to Be an American?"]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-08-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-08-FB-60.jpg BRIDGE TO AND AFRICAN PASE
By the time this photograph of Belgian colonials and Congolese natives reached our archives in 1919—part of a collection donated by Belgian journalist Pierre Daye—the Geographic already had a long history of stories on the region. In January 1899 a passage from "Lloyd's Journey Across the Great Pygmy Forest" presaged this picture. "Occasionally I came upon a very small natural clearing," wrote Albert B. Lloyd, "but generally speaking the growth was very dense.... In many places it was impossible to read even at noon." This photograph was never before published in the magazine.]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-07-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-07-FB-60.jpg LANNE CHANGE
"To the casual visitor, this sprawling metropolis seems almost incredible. Its huge size and fast pace leave him open-mouthed," wrote George W. Long about Los Angeles. His article "New Rush to Golden California" was published in June 1954. This photograph of the Hollywood Freeway—perhaps meant to illustrate what passed for traffic-clogged highways of the time—was obtained by the Geographic that same year. "A vast system of express highways, or freeways, laces this great urban mass together," Long wrote. "Traffic roars endlessly on these arteries at 55 miles an hour (90 kph) or more. . . . This is a city on wheels." This photograph has never before been published in the magazine.]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-06-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-06-FB-60.jpg A NOVEL HOLIDAY
The waters of Conwy Bay could not compete with a couple's beach reading on the "sands"—as the photographer called them—at Penmaenmawr, North Wales. This photograph was probably purchased for the article "A Short Visit to Wales," published in December 1923. In it, author Ralph A. Graves attributed the unwillingness of certain tourists to visit Wales, "one of the most alluring regions of the British Isles," to pronunciation problems. "The average American traveler," he wrote, "lacks the courage to wrestle with such place names as Bettws-y-Coed, Bodelwyddan, Dwygyfylchi, Clwyd, Llandudno, Pwllheli, and Pen-y-Gwryd." This photograph has never before been published in the magazine.]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-05-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-05-FB-60.jpg BARRED, FOR LIFE
Although Marco Polo apparently avoided bandits on Afghanistan's mountain trails, other travelers then and later were plagued by thieves. But our January 1921 article "Every-Day Life in Afghanistan," which included this photograph, reported that "owing to the aggressive pursuit and harsh punishment meted out by the Amir's troops, the once famous robbers of the Afghan hills have almost disappeared." One such punishment was the "man-cage," like this one at Lateh Band Pass. A thief was "put in this iron cage, raised to the top of the pole, so that his friends could not pass food or poison to him, and here he was left to die."]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-04-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-04-FB-60.jpg TRUNK SHOW
The streets of New York thundered when three young elephants—stars of a vaudeville animal act—escaped from the wings of Loew's Victoria Theater on 125th Street in Harlem. "They were finally chased by a crowd of trainers and stagehands into the West 123rd Street Police Station," claims the anonymous note on the back of the photograph, which was first published in National Geographic in November 1930 to illustrate the article "This Giant That Is New York."]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-03-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-03-FB-60.jpg DRESSED TO KILL
When Mabel Cook Cole explored the island of Nias off the coast of Sumatra for a 1931 article, warriors still wore knife sheaths decorated with tiger-tooth amulets. But the rhinoceros-hide armor reported by early travelers was nowhere to be seen. "Today no large animals exist on the island," Cole wrote, "and the sheets of metal used on the coats of mail are obtained from Chinese traders on the coast." This photograph was never published in the magazine.]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-02-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-02-FB-60.jpg TAN LINE
"Sun-baked mermaids at Honolulu's celebrated beach line up their surfboards just before a swift dash on the crest of a curling wave," read the caption for this photo of Waikiki tourists from our October 1938 article "Hawaii, Then and Now." Author William R. Castle grew up in Hawaii. "Not one of us knew when he had learned to swim any more than he could remember when he had learned to walk," Castle wrote of his youth. "In those days, however, few learned to ride the surfboard. Some Hawaiians did it, and we thought they were wonderful, but there was a foolish tradition that only Hawaiians could master the art. We tried once or twice, fell off, and believed the tradition."]]> /flashback/2001/img/2001-01-FB.jpg /flashback/2001/img/2001-01-FB-60.jpg ROCKET SCIENCE
Fedoras firmly planted, technicians from Robert H. Goddard's Roswell, New Mexico, workshop transport pieces of a rocket to its launch site in January 1940. Geographic staff writer McFall Kerbey carries the nose cone. Goddard—the father of the modern rocket—had been persuaded by his friend Charles Lindbergh to allow the magazine access, but every launch that winter witnessed by Kerbey and photographer B. Anthony Stewart ended in failure. The article was eventually canceled, and Stewart's photographs of Goddard's earthbound rockets, including this one, were never published in the magazine.]]>