What a weird investigation though. Sounds like they could have solved it by asking the photographer first, which they eventually did:
> Finally, Spark contacted Murray Close, the photographer who took the picture of Jack Nicholson that was inserted into the original image.
> The photographer revealed that "there was no such thing as the Warner Brothers photo archive [and] that was a complete mistake."
> Instead, Close had sourced the original photo from the BBC Hulton Photo Library in London, now part of Getty Images.
> The photo, it turns out, was taken at a Valentine's Day dance on February 14, 1921, in the Empress Ballroom at the Royal Palace Hotel in London.
huhkerrf 3 days ago [-]
> I do feel a sense of achievement. We knew the photograph with Jack Nicholson in [it]. We knew that there was an unknown man, but we didn't know who he was.
Of course, this skips over the fact that it was actually a reddit poster who discovered the person, and the professor didn't believe him.
Linking to the lite version of an article about an image is an odd choice as the lite version doesn't include images by default. Thanks for linking to the full page.
netsharc 3 days ago [-]
Sheesh, an instance where the "lite" version of the page is more annoying than the full version: an article about an image. Yes I realise I'm moaning about extra clicks to load the images..
nottorp 48 minutes ago [-]
> Instead, Close had sourced the original photo from the BBC Hulton Photo Library in London, now part of Getty Images.
So the UK government privatized their photo archives at some point?
rwmj 5 minutes ago [-]
The BBC is a weird corporation created by royal charter. But it's not a part of the UK government, and nor are works created by the BBC copyright-free (as is the case in the US for something like NASA).
UK government publications aren't copyright-free either. In fact they manage to be worse than copyrighted, at least for works created before 1988 (which are perpetually copyrighted). Read about Crown Copyright here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom
Aardwolf 1 hours ago [-]
Now that I see both pictures side by side, it's actually visible that the arms are in a slightly mismatched position compared to the suit in the retouched version
1oooqooq 1 hours ago [-]
only mystery is why people pretend to like or understand the ending with the picture.
Jgrubb 28 minutes ago [-]
You’ve always been the caretaker, sir.
I should know. I’ve always been here.
Rendered at 12:47:33 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
> Finally, Spark contacted Murray Close, the photographer who took the picture of Jack Nicholson that was inserted into the original image.
> The photographer revealed that "there was no such thing as the Warner Brothers photo archive [and] that was a complete mistake."
> Instead, Close had sourced the original photo from the BBC Hulton Photo Library in London, now part of Getty Images.
> The photo, it turns out, was taken at a Valentine's Day dance on February 14, 1921, in the Empress Ballroom at the Royal Palace Hotel in London.
Of course, this skips over the fact that it was actually a reddit poster who discovered the person, and the professor didn't believe him.
So the UK government privatized their photo archives at some point?
UK government publications aren't copyright-free either. In fact they manage to be worse than copyrighted, at least for works created before 1988 (which are perpetually copyrighted). Read about Crown Copyright here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom
I should know. I’ve always been here.