Maine on Glass

Postcards were the Instagrams of the early 20th century. In 1913 some 968,000,000 postcards were sent in the U.S., more than seven per person. The majority of postcards made at the turn of the 20th century were mass-produced lithograph or letterpress half-tones, but the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company produced “real photo postcards” in the form of silver gelatin prints and was the largest U.S. manufacturer of what it called “genuine” photo postcards. The images in this book were selected from 22,000 glass plate negatives created by the Eastern company between 1909 and World War II.