I’m super pleased to have partnered with Destin of Smarter Every Day to contribute to a video on one of my industrial heros, Sir Joseph Whitworth. In this video Destin has some amazing footage of Whitworth cannons being fired through the unique polygonal bore.
In my first video I would love to have used the footage from the above video from 3:23 to 3:39 as it is the only pre-Johansson gage footage I’ve been able to find.
However, British Pathé is claiming copyright of this footage, even though it dates back to World War I. To license about 16 seconds it would cost nearly $600 even though this is for completely non-commercial educational usage which will not be monetized. Ironically, I can freely link to the entire video for you to enjoy.
I strongly suspect they own the rights to the DIGITAL version they created from the original film stock (for which I am grateful they have preserved so much and made available on youtube) but do not own the rights to the original film footage. Assuming I’m correct in this circumstance (it could still be in copyright by other mechanisms of UK law, in particular, if the creators died less than 70 years ago and the copyright was passed to British Pathe) this appears to be a quirk of UK copyright law which allows for digital versions to be copyrighted even though also under UK copyright law you’re not supposed to be able to be able to re-copyright material which has fallen into public domain.
They also claim copyright on this footage of a USA Miss America pageant clip which has me further confused how they can make that claim.
If someone who is familiar with UK copyright could shed some light on the topics here I’d love to know more.
If there is a copy of this WWI footage (film or digital) that is not copyrighted I’d be most grateful.
Another remarkable moment is the “knocker-upper” man at the beginning waking the women to start their shift at the factory. Before electricity and alarm clocks were common this was quite normal practice until the 1950s (or even 1970s) in some areas.
After months of communicating with Ben Russell, the mechanical engineering curator at the Science Museum, London, I finally visited and we took a very close look at the micrometer reputedly made by James Watt.
Inside the 1950s Heavy Press Program which built the giant 50,000 ton presses which helped America win the Cold War.
The title is a play on the old adage, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics”. I was frustrated as I was racing against the clock before I packed up my shop and moved away for a year. When the last sequence ended in a failure I had no choice but to include it in the final video. In a way, I think it makes it stronger as too often I think mistakes are covered up. But literally a minute after the last frame of video I started mothballing the entire shop. It was a bittersweet moment for sure and made very concrete my imminent departure for 5500 miles away
In this video I show how to find the original Public Domain source for Shorpy images and how to easily and quickly edit them with free tools for amazing results.
In this video I look at what I consider to be the world’s first modern lathe – Vaucanson’s 1751 all metal lathe.
If you want any of the historical photos I’m happy to share. They are all from the Library of Congress with edits to make them more attractive.
First build video where I acid etch the micrometer dials
Honda has made an amazing 100 million Super Cub motorcycles, starting in 1958.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBG1PSpPzwQ