Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Mystery History


Who are these people? And what's happening?

The first person to guess correctly (or even closely) will win a fabulous prize!

I'll have the full scoop on Thursday.

7 comments:

Margaret said...

I'm thinking that it's the 1950s, the height of the cold war, and these guys are demonstrating the proper way to wear an air mask in the case of a nuclear emergency.

larry said...

Mayor Bill Paparian in 1990, having touched down from his adventurism in the PPD 1 copter chasing pesticide-spraying planes out of Pasadena airspace, showing his preferred old-school ground-based method of dealing with the Mediterranean fruit fly invasion ...
Oh, wait. Wrong decade. Tie's too wide, and short. But it was such a great time in Pasadena politics
we might almost wish those days were back.

Petrea Burchard said...

I'm gonna say, prep for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Anonymous said...

Early episode of Let's Make a Deal?

Unknown said...

Training for an outbreak of plague?

Kevin at Time River Productions said...

Actually this picture was taken in 1957 at the short-lived company, The Arroyo Perfume Works, near California and Orange Grove. They are in the back yard outside the laboratory. The "subject," in the center, Mr. Wendell Ameche, is testing a new scent for women, by releasing the fragrance from the test canister in his hands. You can see from his expression that they missed the mark. Tablulating the results are the senior chemists, Dr. Noe Fearstrom (L) and Dr. Ubio Boudinot (R), who wear gas masks in order remain unbiased, in an olfactory version of a "double blind" study.

Paul (the talker guy) said...

Edward Lewis, geneticist and fruit fly expert at Caltech gathers specimens with students circa 1960.

Though I do admire Kevin's fanciful historic creations.

Paul