Today, we take for granted that moving images are used to educate. Generations of school children grew up with teachers turning down the lights, rolling in a film projector or television and flipping a switch or pressing a button to start the show. It might be surprising to learn that there was a time when … Continue reading “Edited by Laura Thornburgh,” Pioneer of Motion Picture Education
The 6th Marine Regiment celebrates after playing a game of baseball. (From 111-H-1361) 2020 marks the long-awaited completion of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Historical Films digitization project. Boasting nearly 800 reels of film, Record Group 111 (Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer), Series H (Historical Films) has been digitized in its … Continue reading Now Playing: Historical Films of the U.S. Army Signal Corps
This post was written by guest blogger Tanya Goldman. Goldman is a PhD Candidate in Cinema Studies at New York University. The ease with which most of us stream movies and television makes it hard to envision the labor of media distribution. Before home video and streaming, transporting films as physical objects demanded careful logistical … Continue reading How the U.S. Army Served its Movie-Mad GIs during World War II
This post was written by Harry Kidd. Harry is a volunteer at the National Archives working on textual and photographic digitization projects. Harry is a former Navy photographer himself and came across this story while researching military photographers. John Purroy Mitchel (1879 – 1918) was a native New Yorker. Trained as a lawyer, he gained … Continue reading John Purroy Mitchel: The Boy Mayor of New York
This Veterans Day, November 11th, is the 100th anniversary of the armistice of World War I. The armistice was not an official surrender by Germany, which would come several months later with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, but was essentially the beginning of the end of the war. The Great War, as it is … Continue reading Captured on Film: Armistice Day 1918
With the NFL playoffs underway, millions of fans will crowd around their television sets, eat buffalo wings, and cheer for (or against) the remaining Super Bowl contenders. Yet football has played an important part in American culture far beyond the National Football League. Photographs at the National Archives reflect the pervasiveness of football in United … Continue reading Football Photographs at the National Archives
Seventy years ago, on December 16, 1944, Allied Forces in Europe were taken by surprise when the Germans launched an attack in the Ardennes region, pushing into France, Luxembourg, and Belgium. The offensive came six months after D-Day and the successful invasion of Normandy, on a misty day when the skies did not permit the use of … Continue reading The Enemy Strikes: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944
