Cable car on Hyde Street, San Francisco, California

Originally a Spanish (later Mexican) mission and pueblo, it was conquered by the United States in 1846 and by an invading army of prospectors following the 1848 discovery of gold in its hinterland. The Gold Rush made San Francisco a cosmopolitan metropolis with a frontier edge. In early 1900s the city tried to remake itself into a grand and modern Paris of the West.

In 2015, documentary photographer Carol Highsmith received a letter from Getty Images accusing her of copyright infringement for featuring one of her own photographs on her own website. It demanded payment of $120. This was how Highsmith came to learn that stock photo agencies Getty and Alamy had been sending similar threat letters and charging fees to users of her images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress for use by the general public at no charge. In 2016, Highsmith has filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against both Alamy and Getty stating “gross misuse” of 18,755 of her photographs. “The defendants [Getty Images] have apparently misappropriated Ms. Highsmith’s generous gift to the American people,” the complaint reads. “[They] are not only unlawfully charging licensing fees … but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner.” According to the lawsuit, Getty and Alamy, on their websites, have been selling licenses for thousands of Highsmith’s photographs, many without her name attached to them and stamped with “false watermarks.” (more: http://hyperallergic.com/314079/photographer-files-1-billion-suit-against-getty-for-licensing-her-public-domain-images/)

People keep searching online for one question: "Where can I find free high-resolution stock images that are cleared to use without any copyright restrictions? Where to find images for blog posts or social media?" Almost every image created in the last 70 years is still protected by copyright, but you can find a public domain photo, an image that does not need attribution, or image that has copyright expired. First, it helps to understand some copyright-related terms before using any free images. Always read the terms and conditions of the site you try to use to download free images and photos, so you know if, when, and what type of attribution is required. What is Creative Commons? Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. There are various types of Creative Commons licenses that range from allowing any type of use with no attribution to allowing only certain uses and no changes. Most authors using Creative Commons require some sort of attribution. While relatively easy to use such free images in blogs, using such images for video might be problematic unless you create lengthy credits section. Even if you do, you still may breach the particular image Creative Commons license since it often requires backlinking. What is Public Domain? Works in the public domain are those whose copyrights have expired or never existed. The public domain status of official government works is sometimes difficult to determine but there are some easy cases: works of the United States federal government, for example, are not protected by copyright and are thus in the public domain. The same does not hold in general for the works of other governments or all 50 States of the United States. Determining whether a particular work of a particular government are in the public domain requires research and sometimes even legal advice. What is Royalty-Free? Most royalty-free images aren’t free. In most cases, you’ll have to pay a one-time fee to obtain the rights to use the image. Then you can use it as many times as you like. The term “free” in “royalty-free” means that you do not have to pay royalties to the owner of the image every time you use it. We've reviewed terms of few popular Free Image Websites below. 1. Unsplash Unsplash has its own license, which essentially lets you use the images for free, in any way you like, except for using them to create a competing website. 2. Pexels Pexels also has its own license, which states what you can and cannot do with the images. You can use and modify the images for free for both commercial and personal use without attribution. 3. Pixabay We love Pixabay. Images on Pixabay are licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0), which means you can use the images without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist. Pixabay also explains tricky legal language such as "model release". 4. Gratisography Gratisography also has its own free photo license, which lets you do “almost anything you can think of”. While they have not too many images, many are high-quality images that I would use. 5. Flickr Flickr is where you can find images that can be used and modified for commercial purposes. Select “Commercial use & mods allowed” under the “Any license” filter to find those images, and remember to check the license for each image as they vary. Be careful with Flickr images since as far as we can see, many images are labeled public domain wrongfully or without much research. 6. Google Image Search Google Advanced Image Search is a method of finding free-to-use images through Google’s own search tools. It is 100% automated, so you can't blindly trust the license cited. Use it with caution. Same as Flickr, Google bears no responsibility. When using free online images, always do your research.

San Francisco's cable car system is the world's last manually operated cable car system and an icon of the city of San Francisco. The first cable-operated street running train was the Clay Street Hill Railroad launched in 1873 following twenty-three lines established between 1873 and 1890. Originally, the cables were powered by stationary steam engines. Coal consumption in 1893 was about 10 tons per day. Electric energy was introduced in 1912 when a 600-horsepower General Electric motor came online. 1906 San Francisco earthquake and resulting fire destroyed the powerhouses and car barns of both the Cal Cable and the Powell Street lines, together with the 117 cable cars. The subsequent race to rebuild the city allowed for to replace most of its cable car lines with electric streetcar lines. Of the 23 cable car lines established between 1873 and 1890, only three remain - two routes from downtown near Union Square to Fisherman's Wharf and a third route along California Street. They are among the most significant tourist attractions in the city, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and are designated as a National Historic Landmark.

The history of trams, streetcars or trolleys began in the early nineteenth century. The world's first horse-drawn passenger tramway started operating in 1807, it was the Swansea and Mumbles Railway, in Wales, UK. It was switching to steam in 1877, and then, in 1929, by very large (106-seats) electric tramcars, until closure in 1961. Horse Cars The first streetcar in America, developed by John Stephenson, began service in the year 1832 in New York. Harlem Railroad's Fourth Avenue Line ran along the Bowery and Fourth Avenue in New York City. These trams were a horse- or mule-powered, usually two as a team. It was followed in 1835 by New Orleans, Louisiana, which is the oldest continuously operating street railway system in the world, according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Horsecars were largely replaced by electric-powered trams following the improvement of an overhead trolley system on trams for collecting electricity from overhead wires by Frank J. Sprague. Sprague spring-loaded trolley pole used a wheel to travel along the wire. In late 1887 and early 1888, using his trolley system, Sprague installed the first successful large electric street railway system in Richmond, Virginia. By 1889, 110 electric railways incorporating Sprague's equipment had been begun or planned on several continents. Steam Cars Trams were also powered by steam. The most common type had a small steam locomotive (called a tram engine in the UK) at the head of a line of one or more carriages, similar to a small train. Systems with such steam trams included Christchurch, New Zealand; Adelaide, South Australia; Sydney, Australia and other city systems in New South Wales; Munich, Germany (from August 1883 on), British India (Pakistan) (from 1885) and the Dublin & Blessington Steam Tramway (from 1888) in Ireland. Steam tramways also were used on the suburban tramway lines around Milan and Padua; the last Gamba de Legn ("Peg-Leg") tramway ran on the Milan-Magenta-Castano Primo route in late 1958. The other style of steam tram had the steam engine in the body of the tram, referred to as a tram engine (UK) or steam dummy (US). The most notable system to adopt such trams was in Paris. French-designed steam trams also operated in Rockhampton, in the Australian state of Queensland between 1909 and 1939. Stockholm, Sweden, had a steam tram line at the island of Södermalm between 1887 and 1901. Steam tram engines faded out around 1890s to 1900s, being replaced by electric trams. Cable Cars Another system for trams was the cable car, which was pulled along a fixed track by a moving steel cable. The power to move the cable was normally provided at a "powerhouse" site a distance away from the actual vehicle. The London and Blackwall Railway, which opened for passengers in east London, England, in 1840 used such a system. The first practical cable car line was tested in San Francisco, in 1873. Part of its success is attributed to the development of an effective and reliable cable grip mechanism, to grab and release the moving cable without damage. The second city to operate cable trams was Dunedin in New Zealand, from 1881 to 1957. The San Francisco cable cars, though significantly reduced in number, continue to perform a regular transportation function, in addition to being a well-known tourist attraction. A single cable line also survives in Wellington, New Zealand (rebuilt in 1979 as a funicular but still called the "Wellington Cable Car"). Another system, actually two separate cable lines with a shared power station in the middle, operates from the Welsh town of Llandudno up to the top of the Great Orme hill in North Wales, UK. As with all large collections on Picryl, this collection is made in two steps - first, we make a manual dataset, and then, ran 25+ Million public domain images through our neural network image recognition process.

• San Francisco Cable Car System - YouTube
• San Francisco cable car system | The wanders
• San Francisco Cable Car Posters | Fine Art America
• San Francisco Cable Car Art Prints | Fine Art America
• San Francisco Cable Car Photographs | Fine Art America
• San Francisco Cable Car 1080P, 2K, 4K, 5K HD wallpapers free ...
• San Francisco Cable Car Art | Fine Art America
• Cable car on Hyde Street, San Francisco, California - Library of ...
• Cable car on Hyde Street, San Francisco, California - Library of ...
• San Francisco Cable Car Art | Pixels