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Big Wigs stand in a section of spillway tubing, Hoover Dam, circa 1935 [1164x888] (imgur.com)

submitted ago by fritzershitzer

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[–]randy9876 53 points54 points ago

The Hoover Dam came in on time and underbudget, but over 100 people died building it.

[–]TheOneTrueMaximus 16 points17 points ago

Even though it is sad that they died, all the workers were volunteers and they new it wasn't safe.

[–]samuelstewart306 38 points39 points ago

What is the new safe you speak of?

[–]bgroins 23 points24 points ago

I think he just missed a semicolon, as in:

Yo, they new; it wasn't safe.

[–]triplea20x -3 points-2 points ago

Isn't >100 kinda good for such a huge project?

[–]drednaught 49 points50 points ago

Colorized!

[–]MangoCats 16 points17 points ago

Why do colorized movies/photos all look like they use the same 6 color paint by numbers set?

[–]OnTheMF 15 points16 points ago

Because they pretty much do. You have way less color information than a real colour photo. The process "basically" is to paint areas of the picture in solid colours, and then blend the B&W image with the colours to give the colours highlights and shadows. From there it's a matter of touching things up and you have a colourized photo.

[–]1speedbike 0 points1 point ago

I imagine whoever is doing the colorizing and/or whatever program they're using to do it has to pretty much guess what color everything is based on the shade of grey and common sense. That's pretty difficult. Just looking at these guys' pants, a shade of brown to me honestly would look like a shade of grey or navy blue or whatever.

[–]OnTheMF 5 points6 points ago

I think the colours have to be selected and painted by hand. Any program would just handle the blending.

Here's an example I did up really quickly. And when I say quick, I mean less than 60 seconds.

Centre guy colourized - it didn't turn out spectacular, but I was short on time. I think you can see the process.

Without blending

[–]senik 1 point2 points ago

Easiest way is to use the multiply layer in Photoshop, if I recall. You just simply draw over it with a color and it retains the shading.

[–]OnTheMF 1 point2 points ago

That's pretty much what I did in the example. I've never done this before, but it seems straight forward enough. I think the best workflow would be this:

  1. Make clipping paths of all individually coloured sections
  2. Fill all sections with selected colours
  3. Duplicate each solid colour layer
  4. Assign one of each set of layers to multiply and screen
  5. Adjust opacity of colour layers to get desired look
  6. Touch-up any highlights or shadows as needed

The important thing is actually using both multiply and screen, this will help maintain the contrast between the highlights and shadows.

Using two layers, and the exact same colour layer I had before this is the new result.

[–]bewmar -4 points-3 points ago

Barely!

[–]j0phus 26 points27 points ago

You know that had to be so tempting for some of the actual workers there.

[–]SmokeDiverFF 14 points15 points ago

That was my first thought, the guy operating the crane must have been really well paid for them to trust him.

[–]smashedsaturn 16 points17 points ago

What the fuck, workers at the Hoover damn were happy for any job, this whole workers vs. employers bullshit is trite and petty.

[–]fritzershitzer[S] 15 points16 points ago

Well, 96 of their fellow workers died during the project, so a few of them might have been a little butt-hurt over that.

[–]GODDAMNFOOL 12 points13 points ago

Do you know nothing about manual labor jobs? People have died in steel mills, warehouses, mines, etc. Considering that over 5000 people were working on its construction at one point, 96 people dying over 5 years is hardly something to riot over.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points ago

Sure, but does that mean the workers had zero resentment?

[–]pounds 13 points14 points ago

Grasping at straws.

[–]recreational -1 points0 points ago

I am honestly perplexed why there is such an an angrily insistent crowd in this thread asserting, apparently without basis, that all the workers on the Hoover Dam were happy, and that, "this whole workers vs employers bullshit is trite and petty," which is certainly laughable as a general statement to anyone in the HistoryPorn subreddit that's, you know, actually studied history.

[–][deleted] -5 points-4 points ago

YES OP YOU GODDAMNFOOL

[–]smashedsaturn -1 points0 points ago

they all chose to work there knowing the risks, for the time it was incredibly safe too. And it's not the employer's fault that workers got hurt, accidents happen, the employers there were the first to mandate hardhat usage, the workers didn't like them at first and would take them off.

We place too much value on human life anymore, but only when it's in small numbers. For us it's a huge deal now if a worker dies somewhere or a few soldiers die, but compared to the amount of people who die in car accidents or from sickness the reaction seems extreme. more soldiers died in single battles in WW2 than in all of iraq and Afganistan. Big numbers are just statistics, small numbers are 'human' god knows why.

[–]GODDAMNFOOL 4 points5 points ago

'omg a ferry in the mediterranean tipped over and killed 6 people, alert the world news!!!!'

[–]burnt_chicken 6 points7 points ago

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic" -Joseph Stalin

[–]smashedsaturn 1 point2 points ago

one of two men who were literally worse than Hitler should know this

[–]n1njapanda 2 points3 points ago

5 Hitlers worse, but a lower Hitler/year rate.

[–]southern_boy 5 points6 points ago

Yes, because no notably egregious worker vs. employer issues had occurred in recent years. None.

[–]smashedsaturn 3 points4 points ago

not the hoover dam, were the workers at the damn locked into the open outside area and surrounded with flammable material? there were no fire exits to lock, this was also a different era, so many people were out of work during the depression that they all packed up and moved to the desert to work on this thing. they knew the risks

[–]recreational -1 points0 points ago

"They knew the risks" is a shitty excuse for exploitation.

[–]smashedsaturn 1 point2 points ago

It wasn't exploitation. How about you learn your fucking history and get your head out of your "enlightened" illiberal ass.

[–]recreational 1 point2 points ago

"It's okay that conditions were incredibly dangerous, because no one forced them to work there" when referring to Depression-era workers isn't exploitive?

Yeah, okay buddy, thanks for the whig history lesson. Glad to know that nothing bad ever happened in Murrica.

[–]troydanger -1 points0 points ago

Hell yeah.

[–]Cadaverlanche -1 points0 points ago

Nice try David Koch.

/jk

[–]tamper 11 points12 points ago

The last time this photo was posted, the general consensus was that it's a fake.

Here's a gallery with 54 photos of the construction of the dam: http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/10/11/construction-of-hoover-dam/5024/

[–]Bulwersator -1 points0 points ago

source?

[–]drednaught 1 point2 points ago

I think you have your facts mixed up: http://www.aws.org/sections/hooverdam.html

[–]tamper 0 points1 point ago

seems legit, good find

[–]cypherpunk 4 points5 points ago

this photo would never happen today, way too unsafe.

[–]yogi_grizzwald 2 points3 points ago

Bechtel bucks baby!

[–]chokeslam512 4 points5 points ago

Hey OSHA, go suck a lemon!

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points ago

Not nearly enough big wigs die in horrific spillway tubing accidents.

[–]blitzfig 0 points1 point ago

Bummer. They're probably all dead now, huh?

[–]Maplebearquan 1 point2 points ago

If I was on that thing I would have been found in the dead center, in a ball and sobbing. I hate heights like that.

[–]brblol 0 points1 point ago

The good old days before health and safety