Treasure in the Attic
By: Lucas Stoev
Introduction
When my mom was doing a massive cleaning in our office, we found a family treasure. It is a picture of Sarah Mineo, my great, great, grandmother. The picture was taken in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. It was taken in a photo booth and printed there. Sarah was a wife and a mother of two when the pictures was taken. It is special to my family because it is a photo of a family member who was born in 1919, almost a century ago.
Life in U.S.
In 1941 life was different then today.The dollar wasn't worth as much as it was today. The president in 1941 was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was president longer than any president. A Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt was elected for his third term in 1940. In the 1940s World War II was going on. Franklin Roosevelt sent U.S. troops into Europe to help England and France fight Adolf Hitler and his army. Then the Bombing of the Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941. The U.S. officially sent troops into Europe after the Bombing of the Pearl Harbor. During World War ll, technology was weak compared to today. There was television, but it was in black and white. There were telephones in 1941 which were all black , and had the phone on top of where they dial the numbers. They had radios with speakers but no screen. They had weak ovens. Refrigerators were available with freezer on the top or bottom. Small refrigerators had one door and big refrigiators have two doors. Dishes were washed by hand. and most people had some small appliances. Today stand mixers replace small kitchen tools, such as the old wooden spoon and the manual egg beaters. For transportation, they had automobiles in the U.S.A. in 1941. They also had passenger trains. They did stop at some places to let passengers get on and off. They had some airplanes. One was called the D.C.-3. It carried mail and it could hold twenty-one people at one time. They couldn't fly to another continent across the ocean. The money in 1941 was worth less than today. The bills were mostly green. They did have pictures in the middle of the dollar.
The World
Worldwide at that time, Adolf Hitler had started a war by attacking Poland and trying to take over Europe. He did get defeated by the U.S. and Europe was restored in 1945. During this time clothes were very fancy. Women wore dresses and men wore a lot of suits. Europe stopped shipping clothes to other countries because of World War ll. The war increased 17 million new jobs. Restaurants were serving 20 million meals per week. Some of the most well known people were alive in 1941, such as Frank Sinatra, a famous musician, Walt Disney, the designer of Disney, and Jackie Robinson, the first African American major league baseball plalyer. The very well known scientist, Dr. Oppenheimer, was alive and his team of physicists split the adams and made the first atomic bomb. The world had a lot of major events in the 1940s.
Photo Booths
Photo booths were introduced in 1915 and were very popular back in 1940s because you would get your picture quickly, but with a family camera you would have to go to a camera shop and have the workers print or develop the picture for you. Back then they had black and white pictures, and today the pictures are in color and a lot faster then in 1941. Today we have digital cameras and have made taking a picture much easier. Cameras were a lot different back then.