Zut alors!

January 5, 2007 9:51 PM

Photos of Paris during the 1910 flood. More. Yet more.
posted by monju_bosatsu (19 comments total)

The second link has some really nice shots. The first on for some reason made the images too big to view on a monitor, but made up for it by compressing them too much. Looking forward to reading the whole third page. Good find.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:57 PM on January 5, 2007

These are spooky and beautiful, but what really stopped me in my tracks was this line from the third link:

...the power station from which all the public clocks of Paris are worked by compressed air was flooded by the Seine.

This seems so fantastic to me, but when I went looking for details, this was all I could find. I can't believe that an internet obsessive hasn't already catalogued this system in detail. Google is failing me.
posted by phooky at 10:15 PM on January 5, 2007

(allow me to rephrase that: "I can't believe that some internet blowhard with too much time on his hands hasn't...")
posted by phooky at 10:18 PM on January 5, 2007

Beautiful. Thanks.
posted by bukharin at 10:24 PM on January 5, 2007

To make the scene more gay, soldiers were everywhere, standing on guard at dangerous points or gathered round fires of wood paving blocks and drinking coffee and hot wine.
posted by Brian B. at 10:28 PM on January 5, 2007

Wow. Musta been a lotta soggy baguettes floating around...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:35 PM on January 5, 2007

These are amazing. If only the images weren't so artifact-ed...
posted by cowbellemoo at 10:42 PM on January 5, 2007

I like it that the first link provides pictures that are so big; you can really examine the details. Great post.
posted by jouke at 11:02 PM on January 5, 2007

Wow. Guess they don't call it the Basin Parisienne for nothing.

Stunning shots. Great find.
posted by psmealey at 4:19 AM on January 6, 2007

This kind of flood are supposed to happen every hundred year or so but don't rush to your local betting office yet, an elaborate system of lakes and dam on the Seine will make sure parisians will not get too wet.

Pity the poor provinciaux who will taste muddy water so that Paris is not too flooded.
posted by Baud at 4:56 AM on January 6, 2007

Bassin parisien.

Merci, très cool.
posted by Wolof at 4:59 AM on January 6, 2007

Ugh. Merci, Wolof. Ça faut trop longtemps.
posted by psmealey at 5:05 AM on January 6, 2007

fautfait.
posted by psmealey at 5:07 AM on January 6, 2007

Cheers. I lived on the street next to this shot for a few months, although mercifully I was on the first floor and it appeared that 1910 was quelque peu révolu.
posted by Wolof at 5:20 AM on January 6, 2007

Mille fois merci!
posted by Busithoth at 6:35 AM on January 6, 2007

Great post. I wonder if anyone thought to climb (probably on foot!) to the top of the Eiffel and get a panorama of the flooded city.

phooky: Here's a rendering of the control room. The clocks seem to be connected (at least indirectly) to Einstein's thought experiments. An illustration of one of the public clocks is here. The designer of the system was Victor Popp, and it appears his compressed air network had other uses, such as powering elevators.
posted by dhartung at 8:42 AM on January 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Great post—thanks, monju!
posted by languagehat at 9:02 AM on January 6, 2007

Last fall I stayed in a basement apartment on the Ile St Louis. It would have been entirely underwater in 1910.
posted by Nelson at 9:22 AM on January 6, 2007

The second link has some really nice shots. The first on for some reason made the images too big to view on a monitor, but made up for it by compressing them too much.

Devils Rancher, it sounds like you're using a crappy browser. Mozilla / Firefox can automatically resize large images down to your screen size (you can then click to view full size). So in this case I can see the compressed thumbnail size, the screen-filling size, and the huge native size. Come on in, the water's fine.
posted by intermod at 1:10 PM on January 6, 2007