How to be a Retronaut

If the past is a foreign country, this is your passport

Anachronisms
- Future in the past
  - A story about civil defence
  - Aliens in vintage postcards
  - Atomic-age Hollywood
  - Mercedes Benz SSK "Count Trossi"
  - Monsanto "House of the Future"
  - Nuclear toys
  - Spacelander electric bicycle, 1946
  - The Dazzle-Ships of WWI
  - Visions from “Popular Science”
- Past in the present
  - "Cloud of Unknowing" - Gorillaz
  - "Photo of Britain in the Ice-Age"
  - "The Swing", 1767
  - Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia
  - Biblical scenes in Google Earth
  - Classic photographs in Lego
  - Facebook updates for historic events
    - Facebook updates for historic events (Part 1)
    - Facebook updates for historic events (Part 2)
  - iVictrola
  - Man removing shirt, 1450
  - Messerschmidt sculptures, 1700s
  - USB Typewriters
  - Vintage typewriter stickers
  - Woman in a chicken suit, 1910
  - WWI cross-dressing
  - WWII paper planes
- Present in the past
  - Apple Mac in Mad Men
  - Contemporary ruins
    - "The Village that Died for England"
    - Abandoned amusement parks
    - Demyanskoe, East Prussia
    - East End shopfronts, 1988
    - Ghost-station Tube maps
    - Ukrainian airfield
  - Contempory Memento Mori
    - Aged Barbie
    - Aged Superheroes
    - And Vinyly
    - Bugs Bunny's skeleton
    - Tweety-pie's skeleton
  - Darth Vader by Monet, 1875
  - Dubai through an 1857 lens
  - Hollywood Premakes
  - iPad in 2024: A Space Odyssey
  - iPods in 1977
  - Ming Dynasty beer-cans
  - Planets and Wormholes
  - Pride & Prejudice & Zombies
  - Retrofuturs
  - Steampunk
    - Steampunk laptop
    - Steampunk Stormtrooper
  - Superheroes in history
  - The Georgian iMax
  - The internet as vintage Penguins
  - Victorian Star Wars
  - “Modern Renaissance” & “Celebrity Time-Travel”
- Time-crashes
  - "Its a Marshmallow World"
  - "Ophelia" in Hackney and Lego
  - "The Prisoner", 1967
  - 7+17+70
  - Antique Beat
  - Banksy
  - Christian Dior in the USSR
  - Collodion Iron Man
  - Dali and Disney's "Destino"
  - Flashback
  - Star Wars in the Silent Age
  - The Blickling Hall clock
  - The Bowder Stone
  - The Soviet "Hobbit"
  - Travels in Imaginaria
  - Tudor Pinhole Camera
  - Victorian Delorean
  - We Are All Animals
Change
- Extreme change
  - "Remember" for Mary
  - "The Collapsing Wall", 1940s / 2024
  - 19th Century America
  - Albert Memorial allotments, 1941
  - Construction
    - Construction of Nelson's Column
    - Construction of the Eiffel Tower
    - Construction of the Statue of Liberty
    - Construction of the Tyne Bridge
    - Construction of Tower Bridge
  - Earl's Court Farm, 1867
  - Heathrow Airport, 1935
  - The Brixton Zebra
- Gradual change
  - "Stour Valley and Dedham Village" (1815/2010), John Constable
  - Anna and Richard Wagner, 1900-1945
  - Chiswick High Road, 1982 / 2024
  - The "Ziggy Stardust" phone-box, 1972-2009
  - Twin Peaks 20 years later
Early technology
- Film
  - "Alice in Wonderland", 1903
  - "Fred Ott's Sneeze", January 1894
  - "The Gay Shoe Clerk", August 1903
  - Bloopers
    - Hollywood bloopers c. 1936
  - Colour film
    - "Colour on the Thames", 1935
    - "London in the Raw", 1964
    - "Temples of India", 1938
    - "The Titfield Thunderbolt", 1953
    - Chicago Billboards, 1942
    - Colour footage of the A1, 1939
    - Deauville, 1912
    - Elvis, 1955
    - Israel, 1940s / 50s
    - Kodak 1922 Kodachrome test film
    - London's VE & VJ Day, 1945
    - London, 1920s
    - Roosevelt, 1941
    - Smalltown America, 1954
    - Soho, 1950s
    - St. John's Wood, 1940s
    - Venice, 1912
  - London streets, 1903
  - Mark Twain, 1909
  - San Francisco's Market Street, 1906
- Firsts
  - 15 World's Firsts
  - The "first colour video"
  - The "first photograph" of New York
  - The first fake photographs
  - The first photograph of a human
- Music video
  - Soundies
    - "A Little Jive is Good for You" - Martha Tilton
    - "A Zoot Suit" - Dorothy Dandridge
    - "Clink, Clink, Another Drink" - Spike Jones and His City Slickers
    - "Cow Cow Boogie" - Ella Mae Morse
    - "Got to be This or That" - June Barton
    - "I Can't Believe that You're in Love with Me" - Peggy Mann
    - "In Old Shanty Town" - Johnny Long and his Orchestra
    - "Loch Lomond" - Martha Tilton
    - "Love Turns Winter to Spring" - Martha Tilton
    - "The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi"
    - "This Love of Mine" - Cyd Charisse
    - "Your Old Grey Bonnet" - Ozzie Nelson
    - “Juke Box Saturday Night” – Glenn Miller Modernaires
  - The first music video, 1895
- Photography
  - Aerial
    - Aerial panorama of San Francisco in ruins
  - Colour
    - A door left open, Monday 25th August 1913
    - Brighton beach, Saturday, June 16th, 1906
    - Christina O'Gorman, 1913
    - Cornwall, August 1913
    - Dorset, England, 1907
    - Dublin, 1961
    - England, 1913
    - England, 1928
    - European mountains, 1909
    - Fleet Street, London, 1:55pm on a sunny Sunday afternoon in 1924
    - Flowers, 1910
    - Imperial Russia, 1909-1915
    - Janet and Iris Laing, 1910
    - London's "Peace Day", 19th July 1919
    - New York City, 1941
    - Objects, 1915
    - Oxford early summer 1924
    - Panoramic Tokyo, 1865
    - Rothschild Autochromes
    - Soho coffee bars, 1959
    - Umrao Singh Sher-Gil
    - WWII WASPs
  - High Resolution
    - Cincinatti, 1848, in hi-res
    - London, 1940s, in hi-res colour
    - London, 1950s, in hi-res colour
    - New York, 1940s, in hi-res colour
  - Snap-shot
    - Girl on a tricycle, Ireland, 1900
    - Jacques Henri Lartigue
  - Stereo
    - 3D Ancient Japan
- Recorded sound
  - "There'll Come A Time" - Arthur Pryor, 1897
  - Recording of Pope Leo XIII, 1903
Immediacy
- Alfred Steiglitz's Clouds
- Bablake School, Coventry, 1955-57, by Alan Hails
- Bus in a crater, 1940
- Carnaby Street, 1968
- Chicago Night Clubs, 1970s
- Children, 1905
- Duke of Windsor, gardening
- High Command, 1944
- Hyde Park, London, May 1944
- London Blackout, February 1944
- Market Day, Oxford, 1968
- Nightingales and bombers
- Paris, 1910-1914, by Eugene Atget
- Photobooth animations
- Portraits, 16th Century, by Holbein
- Portraits, F. Holland Day
- Smiling
  - Smiles of old Japan
  - Smiling Queen Victoria
  - Smiling Victorians
- Soviet Lithuania, 1960s & 1970s
- Square Dance, Oklahoma, 1940
- The "Colinne", 1967
- The Birth of the Ark Royal 1950
- The Jokers, 1959
- USSR, 1953
Multiple time
- Ambiguous time
  - What year is this?
    - What year is this? #1
    - What year is this? #2
    - What year is this? #2: answer
    - What year is this? #3
    - What year is this? #3: answer
    - What year is this? #4
    - What year is this? #4: answer
    - What year is this? #5
    - What year is this? #5: answer
    - What year is this? #6
    - What year is this? #6: answer
- Dual photographs
  - Looking into the past
  - Stepping into the past
  - The Ghosts of…
    - Amsterdam
    - Cherbourg
    - Leningrad
    - Macclesfield
    - Newcastle
    - the Blitz
    - Toronto
    - World War II
  - The Kodak building
Replicas
- Brand-new 18th century shirts
- Brand-new Big Trak
- Brand-new medieval castle
- Brand-new medieval humours
- Brand-new Smalltown, USA
- Brand-new Victorian man
- Brand-new WWII
The Retronaut
- Greetings from 1950s Wales
  - Friday
  - Monday
  - Monday #2
  - Saturday
  - Sunday
  - Thursday
  - Tuesday
  - Wednesday
- Retronautic bridegroom
- The Retronaut's daughter
- The Retronaut's holiday snaps
Time-travel culture
- "Photograph of a time-traveler"
- "Present" - Michæl Paukner
- "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells
  - "The Time Machine" Comic
  - "The Time-Machine" in Lego
- Awkward 80s photos
- Back to the Future iPhone App
- Dr Evermore & the Forevertron
- Echo Park Time-travel Mart
  - 10 Time-travel Mart products
  - 5 Time-travel tourism ads
- Hakan Nordkvist, time-traveler
- Hang this up in your time-machine
- ICANHASTIMETRAVEL
- Mark Wallinger's TARDIS
- Time-machine guitar effect pedal
- Time-travel map
- Tom Swift's Retroscope
Unusual duration
- Contracted time
  - 100 years of Hovis
  - Four sisters, 25 years
  - Rush hour, Waterloo Station, 1970
  - The longest time-lapse video
  - Time-lapse from space
- Exceptional survival
  - Hatch the Tudor dog
  - Ice-Age flute
  - Lennon and McCartney: the last known photograph
  - London's oldest statue
  - Mozart's skull
  - Notting Hill Gate Tube posters c. 1956-1959
  - The Cabinet of Sarah Hare
  - The Roman road-map
  - World's oldest living things
- Expanded time
  - 27-year-old picnic
  - Crayola colour chart, 1903-2010
  - One family, 30 years
  - The longest photographic exposure

Brand-new Big Trak

“BigTrak was a programmable electric vehicle created in 1979, a six-wheeled tank with a front-mounted blue photon beam headlamp, and a keypad on top. A small but dedicated community have reverse engineered Big Trak. In 2024 Zeon Ltd has released a full size replica of the original toy along with a re-release of the trailer accessory”

- Wikipedia