Historical Footage of a Train Flying in Germany (1902)
The footage in The Flying Train offers a magical window to the past, delivering a rare glimpse at urban life in Western Europe at the turn of the 20th century and inviting reflection on the evolution of form.
Watch the Footage
The original black and white footage of The Flying Train was produced in 1902 aboard the Schwebebahn, a suspension railway system still in operation in the German city of Wuppertal. It features aerial panoramic views that capture a "slice of life" of the communities of Barmen and Elberfeld (present-day Wuppertal). The colorized version shown above was enhanced using machine learning techniques by Denis Shiryaev.
A first thing to appreciate in this footage is the protagonist: The massive steel viaduct built atop the Wupper, a tributary river to the Rhine. When did we, as a civilization, become capable of modifying our environment at this scale? When did we achieve this level of mastery over Reality? It is easy to underestimate the ingenuity and technical capabilities of people in the past, but the 19th century was one of big dreams and technical prowess. Don't forget it was 19th century folk who built the Brooklyn Bridge (opened in 1883) and who laid the first undersea cable across the Atlantic (in 1858).
This magical footage is all the more impressive when you consider that the structure is still in place. An anonymous youtuber took the time to produce a fascinating then-and-now comparison.
Watch the Comparison
Do you like what we've done to it? If you feel even the slightest nostalgia, you are not alone. There is something so attractive and wholesome about the world we left behind. It's as if something had gone amiss, something that is hard to put in words. My initial impression is that man-made media multiplied, perhaps a bit too much. Because there is a beauty in simplicity, and simplicity is all but gone in modern urban space.
The Flying Train was originally shot in 1902 by the Deutsche Mutoskop und Biograph GmbH, preserved by the Museum of Modern Art of New York City.
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