It's Okay To Be Smart

Through the lens, let’s journey through time.

Another entry for Friday’s Amazing Journeys. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was shaken by a massive and legendary earthquake. The quake and resulting fire decimated the city, killing as many as 3,000.

A few weeks after the quake, George Lawrence took the iconic photograph pictured above (top). The aerial panorama shows the true extent of the damage, and it’s darkly fascinating. Click here (do it) to find an embiggened version, to explore down to the pixel, almost to the individual face.

Of course, airplanes weren’t even three years old by this time, so aerial photography techniques were quite different than they are today. Airships were expensive and hard to control, so how did Lawrence do it?

Kites.

That’s quite the setup. Cameras weren’t exactly available off the shelf, either, so Lawrence had to build his own!

A century later, a group of photographers and tinkerers led by Ron Klein wanted to recreate the picture, using modern San Francisco as a backdrop. They built a modern version of Lawrence’s camera, attached it to a helicopter, and the result is the bottom version up there.

And of course, this journey wouldn’t be complete without an equally embiggened version of Klein’s feat, too.

Who says you need a time machine?

(images via Ron Klein Photography and USGS, hi-res photo 1 and photo 2)