Scanning old slides

Prior to the digital age, we took most of our pictures using 35 mm positive film which produced slides rather than printed pictures. We'd then print those we really wanted in albums. It was about half the cost of using color negative film and printing all the pictures on the roll. But, of course, we can't leaf through our pictures without setting up a slide projector in a darkened room.

For several months I've been scanning old slides. This week I was at it again, trying to finish the task sometime in the next 10 years. Actually, although we've thought we were keeping them in reasonably good storage, we're finding that some of the slides have been attacked by mold and all of them are showing signs of fading and color change so the sooner I can finish this project, the better.

Right now I'm doing the slides of our trip in 1976 where we cruised up the Rhein River in Germany and spent time in Amsterdam, Holland; Strassbourg, France; Lucerne, Switzerland; and Stresa, Italy.

I came across this picture of Carolyn and me standing in front of Piz Gloria. Just for fun I googled Piz Gloria with the following result:

Piz Gloria, the revolving restaurant on the Schilthorn near Mürren in the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland. The aerial tramway station and the restaurant were built by a Bernese architect, Konrad Wolf. The restaurant claims to be the world's highest revolving restaurant.

Because of the difficult conditions, construction units had to be prefabricated to a large extent. The outer skin of the all-round glass upper floor consists of aluminium-skinned wooden panels, originally an aluminum-coated tent roof. There is a turning mechanism so that all guests have views: around a core of 12 m diameter, a 3 m annulus takes approximately one hour to complete one rotation.

The panoramic restaurant is considered a pioneering achievement in tourist buildings, bearing witness to the spirit of the time of the 1960s. The mountain restaurant was enlarged around 1990 to hold approximately 400 diners, but kept its original character.

In the James Bond novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Blofeld's hideout was a mountain-top building named Piz Gloria. The movie found the Schilthorn building part-way through its construction, and contributed financially to completion of the restaurant in return for having exclusive use during filming. The restaurant retained the name of the James Bond location, and to this day acknowledges the significant contribution to its reputation with a James Bond exhibition in the lower floor of the building, showing clips from the film.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the eleventh novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series. First published by Jonathan Cape on April 1, 1963, it is the first novel to be written after the start of the official film series by EON Productions.

Isn't that a fun bit of trivia!