I guess this was before traffic laws. 
I kept waiting for the earthquake to strike, but no such luck. 
Notice the people standing in it’s path staring?
At first I couldn’t figure out why they were doing that, but I think they were probably staring at the giant high-tech camera thingy on the front of the cable car.
That’s amazing. Everyone is so well dressed.
I just noticed that all or most of the cars are right hand drive.
Yeah traffic laws are definitely not present. Pretty cool video.
Nitpick: That’s not a streetcar – it’s a cable car. Note that there are no wires for power above and there’s a slot for the cable between the tracks. The cars even look like current cable cars.
It’s a common theme in books set in, say, New York City a decade or so earlier how dangerous it is to cross a major street, and how people were constantly getting knocked down by carriages or streetcars.
The trope of “helping a little old lady across the street” dates back to these days when an elderly or infirm person really needed somebody actively guiding them to make it across a street in safety!
That is very cool. And all those people and cars and horses and wagons crossing right in front of the cable car! Do you think they were as close as they looked? How fast do you think the cable cars were going?
Who said it was a streetcar?
Here’s a fascinating article about how it was dated to 1906 (shortly before the earthquake). It was originally believed to be from 1905.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/stew/detail?entry_id=62237
This was the kicker:
Have bookmarked this to show parents during next visit. Thanks for sharing this, davidm!
I already started a thread on this same video a year and a half ago. See it here.
But I can’t get the video to work anymore in the website that I linked to in that thread.
I didn’t intend to duplicate an old thread. I just ran across this and was fascinated by it.
No, that’s okay, especially since I can’t get that link to work anymore. It’s a great video and should be seen.
Great video. It made me imagine walking along that street in 1906 trying to picture what it would be like in 2006. Probably a person living in 2106 will find a similar present day video even more distant and fascinating.
That was awesome–thanks!
I wonder if anyone who saw that camera imagined that people would be looking at the film over 100 years later.
I think it’s entirely possible that some of them may have imagined that, but I think it’s highly unlikely that any of them imagined how we’d be looking at it, let alone how we’re discussing it together from all over the globe. It probably wouldn’t even have been possible to explain computers and the internet in terms they would have understood.
It makes you wonder how people 100 years from now will be looking at videos and stuff of us.
Fascinating video, thanks, davidm. Though I wish they hadn’t added the soundtrack.