Oh how the powerful play goes on...what will your verse be?

PS, who knows the first half's song? Thanks in advance.

Even in the worst of times (recession of 1927) television was able to show the world from its best side.

I have seen this on other sites previously....and never tire of watching it.
#1 It was the "custom" in those day's for men to wear a hat,...as simple as that..When I started full time work ( at the age of 16 ) I worked for a company in the UK called G.A.Dunn & Co...It was part of our working contract that each employee HAD to wear a hat. NOT a cap but a felt hat..this was provided free of charge ( two per year as I remember). If you were seen approaching or leaving the shop without it all hell would break out! Eventually the custom declined and was no longer ( fortunately ) enforced :-). I hated the damn things !

P.S. I had to chuckle at the sight of Whitehall...the last time I went along there was during the London naked Cycle ride ( naked of course ).

Paris 1910 color footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL8xA3-DLBU

where is the tube?

Only been to London once before and 3 things above all else stood out as missing from this movie for me.
1. Pigeons
2. Phone boxes
3. Mobile phones

What was missing for you?

#2 song is: Jonquil - Parasol

Wrong title: there was no TV in 1927 and therefore no "video".
This is a (really nice) film footage.
I am so amazed to see cars and pedestrians sharing the road in "harmony".

#9 it's actually right: video is latin for i see and describes a short audiovisual sequence.

Video technology for tape recorders is a different thing though. Even though the word is the same there is a huge difference between a (taped) video and a video (clip).

#10 I studied cinema and I'm sure about the term "video".

According to Wikipedia:
"Video is an ELECTRONIC medium for the recording, copying and broadcasting of moving visual images."

#11 Dude, just enjoy the (video) clip

What I like about this video is the speed. It seems normal, not twice the speed as many videos of this era were.

I find it fascinating watching the people there, with most likely 99.9% of those appearing in it dead and gone now. It makes me feel quite sad, and reminds us of how short life is. We'll all be gone soon, I wonder who will remember us and the stories of our lives?

# 9. Malakyte
You are incorrect, as you are watching a video on the Internet in digital format in 2013. You're not sat in the cinema watching the celluloid photographic film version, so the video title is correct.

#13 Good catch. Maybe it was a motorized camera, whereas most cameras of the time were hand-operated. With the latter, the speed is variable (go ahead and try to turn a crank at a consistent speed). Between the jarring effect of things slowing down below normal speed, and the need to meet a minimum number of frames per second, those old hand-cranked films are usually sped up. This one shows none of that. That, plus the color, gives one a real sense of what it looked like to actually be there.

#4 Dunn & Co on Oxford Street in London was my first job in england. We did a roaring trade in hats there in the late 80's

#13, #15: The standard of the age was 16fps (frames per second). Currently we are watching at 24-25 fps. That is the reason that an old move shot at 16fps when played at 24fps create the illusion of "fast-forward". I think that the reason for the lack of the fast-forward effect is that the clip was processed to compensate for the difference. This basically requires some kind of interpolating techniques, but for simplicity think of it as a kind of "re-recording".

Always thought how cool it would be to live back in those days.. people were so much more polite !!

Wow a glimpse into the past. So much has changed since.

@7 London Bridge should have been missing for you seeing as it is now in Lake Havasu. . Interesting that they prefaced that shot with something about Americans wanting to buy the tower and relocate it to America, and then low and behold they showed something that Americans DID buy and relocate to America!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_(Lake_Havasu_City)