Congratulations America! Nice launch, great visuals. Even the main booster rocket landing in the drone ship in the ocean. Wow. Best thing ever, next to steam, branch lines, small town depots, big Union Stations and all that.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a1/8d/18/a18d188efd63bb55d7a6331a4f6f12fe.jpg
Back to the basics; a capsule on a rocket, although landing the rocket upright is a nice touch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
Although Mike’s picture, and some of the details in it, are far more interesting. Consider the effect of ‘large-screen TV’ on people in 1961… and the means of producing it. Did CBS keep this in place for any length of time, or repeat the installation ( for example at the depth of the Cuban missile crisis when minutes might have counted getting to CD shelters around GCT?)
Note the very effective Westclox (remember them? I do) sign. Why don’t I remember seeing this anywhere before? This was a different nostalgic age: when America built watches and clocks for the world, not outsourced to Switzerland… in fact another renamed dollar-watch giant, Timex, was reaching market dominance by copying the postwar “expensive minimalist look” of the Europeans at much more affordable price, effectively equivalent accuracy… and carefully touted indestructability.
I confess I wouldn’t want to go back to those inflated days, when apparent technical miracles like Panelescent lighting were accomplished with margin-shaving crude $2.11 devices… but cost the customer much more. Asians made wind-up alarm clocks a thing of amusing retro antiquity, and then different Americans put the functions into a couple of free buttons on telephones.
And, thinking of that, of course who in 1961 would have imagined that long-distance telephone service would become too cheap to meter? Or that telephones in your pocket would be cheaper than those long ago wired up and paid for in your house? Or that telephones in the car would become first commonplace and then illegal?
Fun video Mod-Man!
I have to ask, since the background music, Sousa’s “Liberty Bell March,” was the theme for “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” did anyone mentally insert the “PFFFFFFT!” at the appropriate time?
And at the end, they got it right! Cool!
Very interesting photo of GCT during the Glenn launch. Look at all the fedoras! Men’s hats started going out of style as I recall when it became known that President Kennedy hated wearing hats, but for some older men a fedora was still the mark of a well-dressed man.
Indiana Jones DID bring them back for a short time though.
Yes the big screen in 1962 is quite remarkable. Got to admire that. 20 years ahead of its time, at least in a common everywhere sense.
Against the NY Central ticket counter and all those Fedoras it is an object misplaced in time outside its proper temporal domain. Certainly provides quite the contrast with train travel as it was then and the future. Of course until Covid Grand Central is still widely in use but the New York Central is shockingly gone.
I’m wondering about those Fedoras, just when did they fade out. I was certainly around and quite perceptive but darned if I know. I thought '62 was a bit late in the game but not by that picture.
Maybe with the last film noir flick followed by the dawning of the age of Aquarius.
Walter Cronkite
Scott Carpenter
Walter Cronkite covered many, if not all of the Project Mercury launches, so much so people were calling him “The Eighth Astronaut!”
He covered quite a few of the other launches as well, and was definately on hand for Apollo 11.
I couldn’t, and still can’t figure out why they didn’t get Cronkite for that great movie “The Right Stuff” and used Eric Sevareid instead as the TV newsman covering the launches.
Nice launch and landing of the Falcon 9 indeed. Finally, some good news in this chaotic world. God bless America.
John Glenn
President Kennedy not wearing hats brought about the end of ‘Fedora Days’.
A perfect illustration of what the Mercury 7 astronauts said about the capsule:
“You don’t get in it, you put it on!”
And John Glenn’s corrollary:
“And just think, it’s built by the lowest bidder!”
Missiles and Rockets
https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-mourns-the-loss-of-annie-glenn/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z8hjwT8qKE
My visit to the Cape in 1983. Look for the Mercury/Jupiter gantry and Challenger on the pad being readied for it’s maiden flight:
Thanks Becky! An interesting historical document, even if a little flawed.
People used to filming with electronic devices today that do a lot, if not most, of the work for you don’t realize shooting with a film movie camera wasn’t as easy as it looked.
