These are photographs taken by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information. They are in the "Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information Black and White Negatives" collection of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division . They are all in the public domain (as are the versions of them here).
In each case the version linked-to is a full resolution PNG that I have created from the original TIFF downloaded from the L of C. Regrettably, for this series of photographs the highest-resolution digital versions available from the Library of Congress are not very high resolution. Since the Library of Congress URLs have changed at least once, instead of citing the URL of the original image, I'll cite the call number.
Reading Tape, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Miss Genie Lee Neal reading a perforated tape at the Western Union telegraph office" Call Number: LC-USW3- 032334-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
Reading Tape, 1943
Washington, D.C. Genie Lee Neal and Patricia Kaufman are checking the perforated tape at the Western Union telegraph office." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032343-E [P&P] June, 1943.
Pasting Up a Telegram, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Pasting up a telegram at the Western Union telegraph office." Call Number: LC-USW3-032345-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
Operators, Baltimore Office, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Doris and Dorothy Bell send and receive telegrams from the Baltimore circuit at the Western Union telegraph office." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032344-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
Operators, , 1943
"Washington, D.C. Jean Smith sending a Western Union telegram on the teleprinter to New York." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032196-E [P&P] June, 1943. (Note: A nearly identical view appears as LC-USW3- 032191-E [P&P].
Switchboard and Typing Reperforators, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Muriel Pare, a switching clerk at the Western Union telegraph office." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032342-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
Switchboard and Typing Reperforators, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Miss Kathryne Lister, a switching clerk at the Western Union telegraph office" Call Number: LC-USW3- 032337-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
Switchboard, 1943
[untitled; clearly the same switchboard as above] Call Number: LC-USW3- 032348-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
Pneumatic Tubes, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Miss Helen Ringwald works with the pneumatic tubes through which messages are sent to branches in other parts of the city for delivery." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032347-E [P&P]. June, 1943. While these are not Teletypes, of course, they are in a Western Union office and are being used to transmit telegrams. Besides, pneumatic tubes are fun.
Pneumatic Tubes, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Miss Helen Ringwald works with the pneumatic tubes through which messages are sent to branches in other parts of the city for delivery." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032351-E [P&P] June, 1943. The version in the thumbnail here is from a print and, unlike most of the digitizations in this collection, is reasonably high resolution. A version exists taken directly from the negative, but ironically it is much lower resolution. Here it is anyway: 8d30861u.png.
Pneumatic Tubes, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Miss Helen Ringwald works with the pneumatic tubes through which messages are sent to branches in other parts of the city for delivery." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032356-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
Pneumatic Tubes, 1943
Washington, D.C. Mrs. Eva Poovey working with pneumatic tubes from which telegrams are taken at the Western Union telegraph office." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032333-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
Receiving Telegraph Messages, 1943
"Washington, D.C. Miss Kathleen McCarthy, a Western Union teleprinter operator, receiving gumming telegraph messages." Call Number: LC-USW3- 032199-E [P&P]. June, 1943.
All of the OWI images here were created as official US federal government photographs and are in the public domain. The digitized versions of them at the Library of Congress and the re-presentation of these here remain in the public domain.
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2010 by David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
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