Historical research

Huge apologies for not citing the source of some of these snippets.  I will try my best to do so.  The excuse is that I clip stuff in passing not intending to keep it and then when I get back to it later I think it might be something I want to go back to for some reason and save it and then I have no idea where I found it.  Must do better!


(1)  For fashionable clothing, a woman visited a workroom.............. She sat in a chair and described what she wanted.  Samples were brought to her.  After she had made her choice the goods would be put in her carriage or delivered to her house.  Dresses, coats, shoes were made to measure.  Either the customer would return to the workroom for a fitting after the garment had been cut and basted, or someone would be sent out to fit her at home. 


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(3)



In the first decade of the 20th century, advances in halftone printing allowed fashion photographs to be featured in magazines. Fashion photography made its first appearance in French magazines such as La mode practique. In 1909, Condé Nast took over Vogue magazine and also contributed to the beginnings of fashion photography. In 1911, photographer Edward Steichenwas "dared" by Lucien Vogel, the publisher of Jardin des Modes and La Gazette du Bon Ton, to promote fashion as a fine art by the use of photography.[4] Steichen then took photos of gowns designed by couturier Paul Poiret.[4] These photographs were published in the April 1911 issue of the magazine Art et Décoration.[4] According to Jesse Alexander, This is "...now considered to be the first ever modern fashion photography shoot. That is, photographing the garments in such a way as to convey a sense of their physical quality as well as their formal appearance, as opposed to simply illustrating the object."[5]





(4)

The modern prism binocular began with Ignatio Porro's 1854 Italian
patent for a prism erecting system.  Throughout the 1860s, Porro worked  
with Hofmann in Paris to produce monoculars using the same prism  
configuration used in modern Porro prism binoculars.  Other early makers  
of Porro prism optics were Boulanger (1859,) Emil Busch (1865,) and  
Nachet (1875). 


As an example, the British army became painfully aware of the
inadequacy of Galilean binoculars compared to the prismatic models
its opponents were using during the Boer War (1899–1902), and
introduced prismatic binoculars in 1907. By the opening year of the
First World War in 1914, these had become indispensable, with over
58,000 prismatic binoculars ordered, compared to just 14,000 telescopes and less than 6,000 Galilean binoculars.

Army issue folding binoculars, c 1895. 

Folding binoculars issued to British officers serving in the Boer War (1899-1902). Made by Aitchison & Company, London, these collapsible binoculars were patented in the 1880s. Made using aluminium, they are an early example of the use of the metal in the manufacture of lightweight optical instruments. Unlike modern instruments, using prisms, these binoculars produce an upright image by employing a pair of Galilean telescopes with large convex front lenses and concave ones for the eyepieces.