(@pouduciel)

@pouduciel

Recovering bass player, historian of C19 Military weapons and enthusiastic haunter of archives.

944 Siguiendo391 Seguidores841 Publicaciones

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pouduciel@pouduciel· 28d

Quite...

A Russian cartoon from WW2. It points out the mad hypocrisy of fascism by caricaturing NSDAP leaders as being nothing like the image of the Blonde, Slim or Beautiful Aryan. In fact they were a bunch of fucking weird losers. Remind you of anyone today?

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jul 13

Like the 1960's was all fun and flowers...

The movie poster for the film 'Ring of Bright water' (1969) which is a lovely bucolic tale of a boy and his pet otter. Until a workman kills it with a spade.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jul 3

Nah, go with Gerald Ford in Moscow. Let's get that core temperature really soaring.

It's President Gerald Ford looking spiffy in a fur coat and hat while visiting Moscow. Remember when we thought this guy was an idiot?

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 22

Wojtek has entered the chat...

It's a photo of a Polish soldier and a Syrian brown bear called Wojtek. The bear was adopted by the poles and he served with an artillery unit. He ended up un Edinburgh zoo which was a bit out of order. He liked beer, cigarettes and honey.

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 16

Too late.

Pictures of tins of Heinz Toast Toppers. There were disgusting and delicious at the same time...Dislicious?

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 15

This is also true, however in my world the numbers are the least of my worries...

It's a notebook written by a Swiss officer called von Wurstemberger recording his experiments with projectile shapes in the 1850s. The numbers are legible but his writing is truly impenetrable. He was also one of the rudest men in any army at any time in history.

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 1

The sheer complexity of the things that make other things go bang in a safe and repeatable way is astonishing. This is just an itty-bitty rifle grenade.

It's a page from the 1926 'Textbook for Small Arms' showing the complicated internal gubbins of a German 1914 rifle grenade. No, I don't know what the normal people are doing right now.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Apr 28

It's an old tattered notebook. It should be full of amazing insight but it's just blank. Completely blank.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Apr 25

Si vous pensez que c'est mauvais, jetez un œil à ceci. C'est soit le fusil le plus long du monde, soit le soldat le plus petit du monde.

A truly awful AI generated picture of a Swiss soldier. His rifle is taller than he is.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Apr 2

Phot of the back of a British tank. It shows the box that contains the telephone that allows accompanying infantry to speak directly to the tank commander.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Feb 8

Separated at birth?

pouduciel@pouduciel· Feb 6

Here's our find. An album of hundreds of QSL cards. Sent by radio hams to each other to acknowledge contact. Most are from the late 1930s and from all over the world. Dumped in in a skip after a house clearance. Found the family and offered to send them the album. They didn't reply.

QSL cards sent between radio hams. These are from the UK dated 1938

QSL cards sent between radio hams. These are from Norway dated 1938

pouduciel@pouduciel· Dec 23

This, but golder.

George Patton modelling his proposed uniform for the US Army Tankers. It's not as ridiculous as you might imagine.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Dec 15

I'm currently researching in the Swiss military archives where officers handwriting of the late C19 varies between beautiful and...this. The difference between mass literacy and posh literacy?

It's a document written by a Swiss officer in 1862 as an example of how varied handwriting styles could co-exist.

Now this is easy to read - don't you think?

pouduciel@pouduciel· Oct 24

I hated the original show and the remake isn't much better. The cast is even more low-rent.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Sep 23

Personally, I'm glad the horses are out of it.

You really don't want to know. It's a drawing of a horse hanging from a makeshift harness so a new rifle can be tested to see if it's effective against cavalry. Poor bloody horse.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Aug 25

Every time I see someone spewing the old lie that we somehow stood alone and that makes us special I'm reminded of this, drawn by a man who was bloody well there at the time.

A cartoon by Kenneth Bird, known as 'Fougasse' from a 1940 edition of 'Punch'. Two British soldiers sit on the white cliffs of Dover. One says: 'So our poor old Empire is alone in the world'. His mate says: 'Aye, we are- the whole 500 million of us'. At the time the contribution of what was the Empire was understood. We can be a forgetful and ungrateful nation.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Aug 9

It's a photo of Uncle Mort, as played by Robin Bailey and written by Peter Tinniswood. 'If you want to enjoy yourself in dire discomfort, this is the very place.'

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jul 22

Not saying that some people should be forced to live in Faraday cages but...

It's a portable Faraday Cage. Should some enthusiastic AI users be forced to live in them? I'll let you be the judge of that.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jul 19

Me and my book project.

it's the maze from 'The Shining'. Why? Because my project is getting more and more confusing with every document I find.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jul 19

My article on the Vetterli rifle in America had to touch on the mine wars. There is power in a Union kids...

A picture of a red bandanna for the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. Join a Union kids.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jun 28

Sir Nigel Gresley says 'Ahem...'

The last surviving A4 Steam Engines photographed on a wet evening in Shildon, Co Durham. Beautiful.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jun 28

The death of Capt Nolan from the 1968 film 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. By God sir, David Hemmings was a good looking chap.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jun 20

Sorry, did you want finished ones, or how to make them?

It's a copy of the blueprint for the Swiss M.89 rifle. Honestly, it's a wonder anything ever gets made.

pouduciel@pouduciel· Jun 8

This will always be my favourite reference to Hastings.

An excerpt from the index of 'Gotcha' by Robert Harris. It refers to the attempted murder of Max Hastings by a fellow journalist. I'm sure it was an overreaction but one can see his point.

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 20

Not because it was bad- in fact the very opposite. Scorsese and De Niro created such a brilliant series of vile and cringe inducing characters and events that I wanted to crawl out of the cinema and have a long hot shower and a stiff drink.

Poster for the Martin Scorsese film "King of Comedy' starring Robert De Niro. Feel free to check it out. I won't ever watch it again.

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 14

Nothing says 'I want to kill you' like the gift of Botha.

The failure that was the Blackburn Botha. My grandad had to fly these awful things and was bloody lucky to survive their deadly embrace.

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 13

There are times when a mixture of a German dictionary, a bit of transcription software, German speaking friends and what little fluency I have gained will help me translate the most challenging document. This is not one of those times.

It's a set of test results written by a Swiss soldier called Wurstemberger in 1855. He was probably testing different bullet types and powder loads but I can't be sure as it looks like a drunken spider has tap danced across the pages.

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 12

Comic? 'Robin Dies At Dawn' as reprinted in Batman 80pg Giant 185. If all you knew was the TV series this was mind bending. Book? The script book for the TV series "Quatermass and the Pit'. So terrifying that I hid the book away so I wouldn't accidentally see it and scare myself again.

The cover of Batman 185 80 page Giant comic from 1966. 4 stories inside including "Robin Dies at Dawn'. And he does. Imagine reading that when you're 5.

Cover to the Penguin paperback of the script for the TV version of Quatermass and the Pit (1960) Black and white drawing of a workman runnnig in terror from the excavations of the ..well, you'll have to read it.

pouduciel@pouduciel· May 7

When I want to imagine what total industrial war really means I turn to this. It’s a shrapnel ball from an 18 pdr Field Gun. Each shell contains 375 of them and there were 72,980,758 of these shells produced between 1914-1918. Imagine the resources involved.