I know it wasn't the 2nd capitol building, there were no steel beams in 1812. Riveting was something new during the civil war and the first submarines were assembled using riveting and a lot of water proofing. today all those repairs have long been upgraded, there is a massive underground complex build just 20 years ago so that government can be safe during an attack.
When I bought my last house in 1978, my neighbor who was in his 80s had worked as a maintenance guy in the White House his entire life. So he probably started that job in the 1920s (or even earlier.) He had tallow candles he had picked up from there...I forget which administration he told me they were from.
Some of the most interesting books I have ever read were written by former White House servants, who served first families for years. The books were fascinating and for the most part written with the greatest respect for the occupants of the White House. (A few tidbits about eccentricities, though.)
I was trying to locate all of the last Tributes I had made the past 3 years. I have so many hard drives full and not installed I have a hard time finding anything since I need nothing daily. My computer repair is finished and now I have time to do some other things. Here are a couple Tributes and a couple images I made but never gave to anyone.
So where do you get the photos of those guys, Thomas? Given the era, they are obviously scans of prints. Who originally took them?
Many of the aviation guys flew with me, several not in this group but overall were people who served in Infantry for their first tour and switched to Aviation their final or extended tours. I stayed 3 extended tours and found myself not knowing anyone on the opposite end of the runway where I first started my tours. I spent two years in the 121st and the first year was the 336th, both companies were in the 13th Bn. Just about everyone I knew is now gone with the exception of maybe 4 that I flew with. In one of the images is Preston Lickey which joined the 336th for his final tour. He is still living the last time I spoke was with him was 3 years ago. I have tons of images or tributes for people I had never known and a lot of them are dead now. I spent a lot of time on other company websites getting information from people that had requested an image, so I continued to meet a lot of people I never personally knew. For my two companies I made one background and gave it to as many people as I possibly could because a lot of people were beginning die. I still have a lot of images I need to find and post. I bought a desktop docking station for the sata drives but I need one for the IDE ribbon type of early drives so I can just plug them in without having to install them. I have a recent URL to download the free version of adobe photoshop which is CS2 and it was the very last before they shut down their server support for the paid product and moving to the cloud with their lease program. If you want it I will post it tomorrow. It was probably the best version released and less troublesome.
I posted the online version that is almost 100 percent same as today's paid version. This CS2 was abandoned by adobe because they had to totally shut down the servers that contain all the customer accounts and licensing since millions were affected. It would have been very costly had they not shut it down and setup new servers for the cloud versions of the never owned software they were moving to. You cannot buy adobe today you just pay by the title and monthly or extended service time for all their different products. I had CS2 in 2005 and all my image work was done using CS2 but with many plugins added. Many people think it was the best release. I believe that too, the new versions have so much bloat and useless stuff you have to relearn to use it. They are stuck on this dark interface like all this other crap that all the younger software developers love because they can actually see it and think it is nice. Give then about 40 years and all of them will be wearing magnifying glasses in frames. I think serif products have a much better interface for their similar products in the Affinity packages that compete with Adobe. You can buy the two main programs Designer and Photo for for a hundred dollars when you cannot buy adobe you must rent it monthly. Or use the online free version which is great for people who are just hobbyist or someone that needs to make some simple size and resolution changes for forums and websites.
I always wanted to learn Photoshop but I can't even figure out "Paint 3D" that comes with Windows. The most editing I can do is "resize photo."
Excel has a function where it will recognize an object in a photo and extract it. There are ways to click on the bits it may have missed, and to click off the bits it erroneously identified as being "part of." I've played with it, but I don't do much imaging stuff, and I'm not motivated to invest the learning time required on any program just to make funny compilations.
I haven't used Excel since I retired and I don't plan to ever again. All the image-manipulating software just seems so complicated and time consuming.
I did some research and find that it would have been Benjamin Harris who was the first President to have electricity in the White House. It was Sept 14th 1891, those tallow candles were pretty old. That still doesn't actually give the true age of the candles the person retrieved. Also it could have been any past President other than Harris. I read some good articles explaining that candles was big business and expensive for everyone. The burning time was not like the movies portray, very short burn times and constant attendance by the maids and others etc. The history was really interesting.
...with no real benefit, unless you're a Graphics Designer or are into the stuff that Thomas does. And I still use Excel every day.