28,000 historical photos on forest and avalanche research published
A significant part of the visual heritage of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) is now available online on E-Pics.??
Around 28,000 digitised glass plates, film negatives and slides are now available on ETH Zurich's E-Pics image platform, providing an insight into over a century of research, technology and everyday life.
Visibility for a century of research history
The catalogued holdings include historical photographs from the external page Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the external page WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF). They document topics such as forests, avalanches, snow, landscapes and the working world of researchers since 1902 and include important collections such as those of the federal forest inspector Frank Fankhauser (1849–1932) and the avalanche research pioneer Ernst Eugster (1903–1977).
The subjects range from clearing land for the construction of Kloten Airport and clearing snow-covered railway tracks to early measuring constructions in the high mountains and tests of innovative chainsaws. ‘The photos are of great cultural and historical value, among other things because they visually document an important part of Swiss forest and avalanche research,’ says project coordinator Thomas Reich.
Rescue operation involving a lot of manual work
The historical image collections had been stored for decades at various locations in Birmensdorf and Davos – sometimes under unfavourable conditions. Temperature fluctuations, humidity and dust had taken their toll on the sensitive originals. ‘It was high time to protect the images from further deterioration and store them better in future,’ emphasises Reich.In several thousand hours of meticulous manual work, the project team reviewed the collection, sorted and digitised the photos, and then packed them in modern, light- and dust-protected archive boxes. Since then, they have been stored under controlled temperature and humidity conditions. At the same time, the digital files were carefully and faithfully retouched. Most of the images – approximately 13,500 – were digitised directly in the ETH Library's DigiCenter.
E-Pics: access to over 1.5 million images
To ensure that these valuable photographs are not only archived but also used, they have been published on ETH Library’s extensive image platform E-Pics. Over 1.5 million photos are already available there, including the ETH Library's image archive, the City of Zurich's architectural history archive and collections relating to Thomas Mann and Max Frisch.
All photos from the WSL and SLF can be downloaded free of charge, and most are available for free use under a Creative Commons licence.
Image catalogue: https://wsl.e-pics.ethz.ch
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