[60 fps] A Trip Through Paris, France in late 1890s / Un voyage à travers Paris, 1890

Denis Shiryaev · 9M views · 2020 · 6:07

Open on YouTube

World historyComputer vision, speech & NLPDocumentaries & storytellingother

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN cites it for the look of pre-car city streets, with pedestrians moving freely among carriages, and as an example of AI film restoration.

What it is

Denis Shiryaev's neural-network-upscaled, colorized 60 fps version of film footage shot in Paris between 1896 and 1900.

Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2020 to 2024.

What Hacker News said

Recommends duchenne · 2022-07 · on “When cities treated cars as dangerous intruders”

It is worth noting that streets were dangerous even before cars. For instance, Pierre Curie (Nobel prize and husband of Marie Curie) was killed by a horse-powered truck in the streets of Paris in 1906. He was 46. But pedestrians at that time had the freedom to walk in the middle of the street at any time. You can clearly see it in this fascinating video of Paris in late 1890s: [this video]

Cites DominikPeters · 2020-12 · on “Paris to ‘get rid of 70k parking spaces’”

Old film footage suggests to me that it was just more "lanes" and in general more chaotic, e.g.: [this video] [LINK]

Cites qwertox · 2024-01 · on “Rue de l'Avenir”

There's a video at the bottom of the article apparently shot by Thomas Edison in August 1900. YouTube has a couple more of them [LINK] Here's also an AI-upscaled/-colorized video which contains a bit of the boardwalk. [this video]