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14,000 Images of the French Revolution Released Online (2014)
- frozenport 11y agoI really like An astronomer looking at the stars, and falling into an abyss (1789-92) (via French Revolution Digital Archive) http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/frenchrevolutionarchive9.jpeg http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/frenchre... As it reminds us that the pursuit of scientific knowledge can often distract brilliant people from addressing social problems. I wonder if the glut of research scientists is one of the mechanisms by which the status quo is preserved.
- cm2187 11y agoI am not convinced scientists' role should be to address social problems. Beside since we are talking about France, most of the scientists that were politically engaged were Stalinists.
- mitchtbaum 11y ago"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
- espadrine 11y agoYour comment shows a profound misunderstanding of History, as Stalin was born 90 years after the French Revolution (and Karl Marx 30 years). Even while Stalin was alive, few if any French scientists were Stalinists, as by the time he rose to power France was diplomatically closer to the US than they were to the USSR. During the Revolution, and preceding it, it turns out that many scientists were involved or even instrumental in the social progress that occurred. The simple act of imposing the metric system was meant as a way to eradicate the imperial in "imperial system". The Enlightenment caused the rise of many ideas of equality that can be said to have triggered the Revolution. Of course, the extremes of the Terror also caused some scientists that were not deemed invested enough to lose their head, such as Lavoisier, the man that proved the conservation of mass. It should be noted that the government apologised a year or so later.
- cm2187 11y agoI am not talking about French scientists being Stalinist during the French revolution but being Stalinist under Stalin and until the 70s.
- espadrine 11y agoStalinism is defined by policies of state terror, state centralization, purging the government and maintaining a cult of personality. Those are pretty extreme positions to hold. Historically, many of Stalin's actions were not seen keenly in France, including Stalin's Gulags, his pact with Hitler, and over the cold war, his territorial aggressivity over the USSR's satellite countries. You may note that France was very decidedly on the other side of the Iron Curtain. There definitely were quite a few socialists, there were a few communists, there probably were few Leninists, but I doubt there were any Stalinists. I'd be interested in the scientist's name if you found one.
- cm2187 11y agoThe communist party was the largest political party in France after the war and it was fully and openly aligned to Moscow. You may (and should) interpret being a stalinist as a bad thing today but it wasn't at that time for a large portion of the left. But my point is rather that being good at math and at creating mathematical representations of nature doesn't qualify someone to make decisions on how other people should live their life.
- frozenport 11y agoBut Democracy requires everybody to participate in the political process.
- dave_sullivan 11y agoFor an interesting example of that, check out Antoine Lavoisier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier, executed during the French revolution.
- jkot 11y agoOne of the Herschels (Caroline?) fell into well and almost died...
- cyanbane 11y agoPlease change 14k to 14,000 (value vs quantity). Although I should have been smart enough to realize that the latter could not exist, it may be better to state it empirically without getting people's hope's up. :)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- SamReidHughes 11y agoAnd here I thought it was some kind of high-resolution image format!
- boulos 11y agoI also assumed they were super high resolution scans. I'm guessing the submitter needed to shorten the title and unfortunately picked 14000 => 14k instead of say removing "released online" or even just "online". Hopefully dang will see this soon enough ;).
- Kiro 11y agoI'm stupid enough to think they were photographs in 14k. Yes, I know... Don't mention it.
- dang 11y agoSorry, that was us. Changed.
- incompatible 11y agoIt would be even cooler if they weren't claiming copyright on their reproduction of public domain images. "The use of these contents for commercial purposes is subject to payment and covered by a license."
- guessbest 11y agoI don't understand how images outside of copyright can have a license enforced.
- cooper12 11y agoSome countries like the UK have a "Sweat of the Brow" [0] doctrine which lets them claim copyright by virtue of the effort put in to compile the work. However it isn't recognized in the U.S because they doesn't see this as requiring creativity so it doesn't count as a derivative work. This has the benefit that companies can't circumvent the public domain without altering the work, but it also disincentives them from digitizing older works. I don't know if french law acknowledges the doctrine or not. Regardless it is pretty unbecoming of a project started by government archivists and headed by a national library, though I do understand that they might want to recoup some of their costs. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
- guessbest 11y agoBut the site with the reproductions is hosted[1] in the USA[2], right? If so, then one could conclude that there is no copyright on the digital reproductions. [1] http://frda.stanford.edu/ http://frda.stanford.edu/ [2] © Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
- cooper12 11y agoI think the copyright notice at the bottom is just website boilerplate. it's also on the main Stanford library website. The about page says "For commercial use, contact: utilisation.commerciale@bnf.fr", so it is the Bibliothèque nationale de France that is claiming copyright. IANAL, but I think you'd be pretty safe using those images on servers hosted in the USA because then you'd be under the jurisdiction of U.S copyright law, but things can get messy as in this case where a British Museum threatened to take the Wikimedia Foundation to UK court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_....
- yitchelle 11y agohttp://frda.stanford.edu/ http://frda.stanford.edu/ The direct link to the actual images.
- yeukhon 11y agoThank you! Very cool animation. I assume D3.js (on mobile not seeing the source code).
- harshnisar 11y agoI think it is timeline.js
- monjedetonsura 11y ago" Stam with a skull and guillotines with the words “liberty” and “fraternity” (1799) (via French Revolution Digital Archive) " Nope, it says fraternite & égalité (equality).