Skip to main content

Even older dashcam footage found from Vancouver in 1907

Posted Jan 12th 2013 4:00PM

CommentsAdd
Vancouver street life in 1907 as seen in early streetcar dash cam vid - screencap

Let the dashcam navel-gazing continue. As the story goes, Australia's National Film and Sound Archive dug up some camera footage in 2008 originally thought to hail from Hobart, Australia. A closer look revealed the images were actually of Vancouver, BC. In 1907, Seattle filmmaker William Harbeck took his hand-cranked camera aboard one of the Canadian city's streetcars and began capturing life as viewed from the streets. The 106-year-old film shows bustling neighborhoods filled with pedestrians, stray dogs and men on bicycles all darting around town. The clip is an interesting glimpse at a life gone by, and predates the claimed oldest dashcam video we showed you before by an impressive 19 years (although obviously it's using a streetcar and not a conventional automobile).

Sadly, chronicler Harbeck met an untimely end. When he was 44 years old, he was commissioned to document the launch of a world-famous ocean liner, a ship that wound up on the bottom of the Atlantic. The name of the vessel? The Titanic.

Click here to take a look at Hartbeck's view of Vancouver below.




Truck Full Of Cows Crashes

Add a Comment

*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

3 Comments

Filter by:
HowardS

For those that are interested in Vancouver in 1907, with more details about this film, check out this link:
http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_1907.htm

January 14 2013 at 1:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sstvp

So... has anyone found footage from Italy in the 1920s & 1930s. Something that illustrates them driving on the left in the city, and on the right elsewhere.

The world needs to see this madness.

January 14 2013 at 5:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Zaki Jiwa

This footage is not really a pop up surprise. I was shown this in my Social Studies class last year.

January 13 2013 at 4:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply