History is full of revolutionary and innovative engineering projects, from the world’s most powerful locomotives to a little SUV that became a global sensation. Many of these vehicles and projects eventually end up erased.
David wrote about how the original administrative building at American Bantam burned to the ground, taking tons of history with it. It’s just one part of Jeep history that’s fading away. Max Headbolts gives us a sad dose of reality for the first COTD win:
One person’s priceless is another person’s garbage. While I understand the sentiment, we as a society would go mad if we tried to save EVERYTHING.
I’m currently struggling with this on a personal level. I have a decade of drawings, clippings and schoolwork for my two kids. How much of that is just trash that needs to be returned to the earth, and how much should I keep as precious? I’m still struggling to sort that and for now, they hide in boxes in a closet. I’m not ready to archive that stuff just yet.
ChefCJ has a great outlook:
The past gives way to the future. Old buildings that once housed great things become the caskets of those ideas and passions. As sad as it is, this is simply the way of the world
I say this as someone who just cleaned out my uncle’s disgusting and dilapidated house after his passing and found paintings and drawings my aunt created that haven’t seen the light of day in more than 30 years. I’m taking these things and trying to give her a second life, to keep her from being forgotten, but I also know that time is undefeated in it’s erasure of precious things. It’s terrible that so much is lost and thrown away and forgotten, but forward progress forces so many of us to forget the past so we can keep moving, and it’s usually only when it’s too late that we realize its importance.
Finally, on Friday, Matt wrote a Members Only Tales From The Slack about my patent-pending insanity. Kevin Rhodes made me smile:
If you go fast enough, what’s behind you no longer matters, right?
Mercedes is a treasure. Though I feel she is merely mid-pack of the inmates running this particular asylum.
See also, Grey alien in a beige sedan:
I, for one, adore Mercedes (the person).
She helps the site maintain an entirely appropriate level of bonkers… above and beyond Torch’s own oddball proclivities.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic: Library of Congress
There is actually a lot to unpack here, history, relevance as well as preserved and what is chosen to be preserved. What needs to be saved, kept safe or worthy of preservation?
I work at a school and a good friend just retired. When she left, her classroom was full of her life’s work- books, notes, boxes and boxed of materials, but to the rest of the teaching team, so much of that was old, out dated or didn’t fit in with the currents styles or trends of teaching. As the grade level leader it was up to me to go through it all, and while it pained me, except for a few boxes of books for a classroom library I threw out one teacher’s entire life’s work. Would any of it have any historical significance or be museum quality? Worthy of study in the future?
As someone whose hobbies all involve the generating of (what feels like) increasingly larger physical systems, this question has plagued me frequently since the beginning. I literally can’t keep everything I make or work on, right? With each project being the end result of my heart and soul, I always need to think about what the disposition and memorialization will be like.
One thing that makes it easier for me is the fact that I’ve had for the longest time a habit of documenting and pictorializing my work. Whether it’s long form on my own website or just an album of photos and videos that hasn’t made it online, or literal paper sketches in a notebook. It’s fairly easy for me to stroll back through the archives – usually to figure out what the hell I did 5, 10 years ago and now need to decypher. But it lessens the need to keep everything around drastically. At some point, every project runs out of its useful life and becomes dead weight or something I keep moving or tripping over. If I got all the information I wanted out of it, I feel, it’s easier to let go.
The corollary to that is I’ve also, for the most part, been the judge jury and executioner of my own work. The whole of the system or object is its metaphysical representation to me, less so the individual parts. I personally dismantle the old and wrecked robot carcasses and cut them up and scatter the remaining useful parts in my collection. I personally went through my academic archives, which spanned back to middle school, and decided what to keep as representatives of each era or timeframe. The rest I made a bonfire out of: No takesies backsies, no languishing in a dump. Being a positive end to my own thoughts is worth the extra trouble.
Personally, I vibe with the theme in the original thread about the factory buildings: If it’s not architecturally significant or economically viable to keep using, document its history well and knock it down. A lot of “Historically significant building collapses/burns down, having been neglected and abandoned for 40 years” stories make me ask why the corporate owner was doing the equivalent of me tripping over the husk of a robot I built in high school over and over.
Likewise, I have a lot of my automotive history wrapped up in the Mitsu van. If I ever wreck it, or something happens to damage it beyond repair, it has to go out by my hands only. No ending up in a pick and pull yard after an insurance sale. I’m thinking Lemons…
Are you aware most of the advanced technology from the 60s and 70s has already been lost, especially related to NASA?
I knew an artist that was successful, started an art academy and affected the lives of thousands of people.
He told me he wondered if any of his art would survive in the distant future.
I suggested distributing his art openly might do that.
He always had a special quality.
You don’t meet many people that are commonly called saintly.
Hey, that’s a picture of the flying car the government has been keeping from us!
Oh… Hugh, you didn’t get yours? I did and everyone on my street did, for free too. Unlimited power means no boring fill ups at the petrol station. I love mine! So, umm, what did you DO to not get one Hugh? Huh? Upto hijinks or ne’er do well – Again?