Wednesday 27 July 2016 at 18:24
Punch magazine's vision of the smartphone zombie from 1906.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/a-vision-of-isolating-technology-from-1906/
Tuesday 26 July 2016 at 19:03
Utopian fiction delivering a vision of a one-class socialist utopia while at once offering a biting critique of unfettered capitalism.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/a-traveler-from-altruria-1894/
Wednesday 20 July 2016 at 17:37
The first essay in a two-part series in which Lily Ford explores how balloon flight transformed our ideas of landscape. We begin with a look at the unique set of images included in Thomas Baldwin's Airopaidia (1786) — the first real overhead aerial views.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/07/20/for-the-sake-of-the-prospect-experiencing-the-world-from-above-in-the-late-18th-century/
Tuesday 19 July 2016 at 19:45
Examples of Singerie, from the French for Monkey Trick, a genre of art in which monkeys are depicted aping human behaviour.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-singerie-monkeys-acting-as-humans-in-art/
Thursday 14 July 2016 at 17:08
A vision of the future from General Motors created to champion their "Highways and Horizons" exhibit at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/to-new-horizons-1940/
Wednesday 13 July 2016 at 17:25
An account of being confined in Ticehurst, a private asylum in Victorian Britain, by the author Herman Charles Merivale.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/my-experiences-in-a-lunatic-asylum-1879/
Wednesday 29 June 2016 at 16:51
Victorian sexuality is often considered synonymous with prudishness, conjuring images of covered up piano legs and dark ankle-length skirts. Historian Matthew Green uncovers a quite different scene in the sordid story of Holywell St, 19th-century London's epicentre of erotica and smut.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/06/29/the-secret-history-of-holywell-street-home-to-victorian-londons-dirty-book-trade/
Tuesday 28 June 2016 at 17:48
Images from an exquisitely illustrated Persian translation, thought to hail from 17th-century Mughal India, of Zakariya al-Qazwini's medieval treatise on all things wondrous.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/marvels-of-things-created-and-miraculous-aspects-of-things-existing/
Wednesday 22 June 2016 at 12:50
Illustrated by George Cruikshank among others, a collection of word, number, and picture puzzles in the form of enigmas, conundrums, acrostics, and a series of incredibly tricky rebuses.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/guess-me-1879/
Tuesday 21 June 2016 at 16:36
Collection of stellated and uniform polyhedra belonging to Max Brückner , a German geometer.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/max-bruckners-collection-of-polyhedral-models-1900/