Detective work

We happened to be in the Lyric in Great Windmill Street yesterday afternoon and our corner contained a large reproduction of a photograph of Piccadilly Circus, taken at a time when you still had a few horses in the street.

Long discussion about when the photograph might have been taken, with my pointing to the number of internal combustion engines for a late date, that is to say after the Great War, and BH pointing to the length of the ladies' dresses for an early date, that is to say before.

The discussion being inconclusive, I took this snap of one of the engines, with the theory being that the sign at the top was probably an advertisement for a show at the Lyric theatre (not far, as it happens, from the public house that we were in) and that one might be able to date the photograph by the name of the show, which appeared to end with the word 'olivier'.

Back home, I asked bing about lyric and olivier, which did not work at all. But I then turned up the wikipedia entry for the Lyric Theatre, which helpfully included a list of all the big shows that had been on there since the beginning. With the result that it now seems quite clear that the sign says 'The Chocolate Soldier', a show put on in 1910. BH right again.

Interesting to see the odd way that the many layers of image processing have damaged the words in question, with some of the letters being more or less obliterated and others being badly, not to say misleadingly, damaged. Perhaps all would be revealed if I got back into my cut price copy of reference 3, mentioned at reference 4. If only acquiring knowledge was as easy as buying the books which contain it!

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyric_Theatre,_London.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/ratters.html. For our last visit to the Lyric, more than two months ago.

Reference 3: Image processing handbook - John C Russ - 1992.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/flou.html.