We thought that the earliest lolcat that was ever found was from 1905, but thanks to Cheezburger Frend tessm, we’ve discovered that there were even OLDER lolcats from the 1870s!
During the 1870s, photographer Harry Pointer took pictures of his pet cats sleeping, eating, or just being cats. He then started adding captions to make the picture more entertaining. Pointer ended up making 200 of his own lolcats as part of his “The Brighton Cats” series. The spelling and grammar may be a bit different, but it’s clear that even in the 1800s, cats have still been wanting that elusive cheezburger.
Via Photo History
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Copy & paste this:
But dere wuz no innerchoobs den!
conga ratz, anni! ai hurd teh klok chaim, butt(!) sed ‘teh LOLs ar layt tudae’. butt(!) dis won iz eerlee (adn teh LOLz ar berree eerlee!)
Thx catena!
May ai exten de ole fashunned congrachewlaysuns on yore hystoriclol nawt sekkund.
I thank thee!
Have a seet on mai veranda and ai will put on mai lacee gloves and big straw hat, and we will have owr YNGs fan us and bring us sum lemming ade and cucumber sammiches. Fiddle-dee dee!
Aer teh krusts awl cuttid off teh sammiches?
But of cowrse!
Plz to be extending pinkee finger whiles sipping lemmingades.
Thanksyous.
sept mebbe teh uppurmoast krust, az a simblolik jeschyur?
Oh noes, teh upper krust hab 2 hab awl teh krusts rimoobed. Teh serbints can eet teh krusts.
that must make them the anti-crust…
Itteh Bitteh HistoricLol Societee hee.
ooops. Miss Spelt: should be SocieTea.
edda wae, iz full awf WIN!
Tea, are tehre enni biskits?
LOL-catz- de erli daze!
Woot woot for tessm!!!
GMTA NS!
Conga Rats for tessm!!! And teh kittehs say, *We’re still waiting for teh noms, Betsy*
oh fankees!
ai founded dis inna kid’z board buuk on the “foar sale” shelf at teh liberry. wiv lotsa cats in art innit!
excellent use uv 50 cents, aifinkso.
A wunnerful find, tessm! ai do believe u shud get a Frunt Paige burger trophee fur submitting this ‘n ai wish we cud favorite it, too! jus sayin
yay tu tessm!!!
wae yu ben hunten dese awp?
nyse fynd, tessm!
They wuz onlee in blak an wiet tho.
Dere wuz nao orinj kittehs den!
Dere wuz no marmalaid kittehs, dey was marmite kittehs bak den.
I hearz marmite is teh pleh. i can has gnutella kitteh instead plz? kthnxbai
Ohai SS ai doan’t fink we haz met. *offurs floofee paw in walkum*
Marmite iz wun uv doez fings u eever like oar hayt (Ai hayt it!)
mmmmm nootellah!
*snerk*
So you couldn’t tell the basement cats apart from the others?! Oh boy!
Humid Hot weather causes brown out in Lol Lol land. Film at 11benty:00
Teh “foraging” pieoneers!
And hooray fur Tessm!!
Forchoon muss bee rite roun teh cornur!
*luuks hoapfullee round corner*
Lolcats ar furebber.
sum tinkz ar tiymluss.
I’m sure there were lolcat hieroglyphs in Egypt!!
@@@@@!
yesh, there were prolly teh hieroglyph-itti of lol cats, but they were quickly cleaned off without a trace: they took cats pretty seriousloly.
Ai haz seed a foto uv a ‘Gipshun wawl payntin dat had a kitteh in it.
Dey worshipped kittehs bak den — jus az we shud nao, aifinkso.
Aifink moast uv us heer do wership dem!
U meen peeplz duzznt ennymoar? Um, Papa…?
ai feel much as Howard Carter must have felt when he founded King Tut’s toom.
I’m sur farthur bak dere wer lolcat cav pantings.
But dey kuddnt be kapshund befoar rytings wuz inbented.
sins we diddint studee this hirstory, iz doomed repeatz
I say, Mr. Pointer, these pictures of your cats make me chuckle audibly with humor (or as the Americans say, Laugh out loud)! You should defiantly make more and market them! What they should be called I have no idea as of now. Hmmm… maybe we should call them “Laugh Out Loud Cats”. A remarkable name if I do say so myself!
A capital suggestion, Firestix! However, and I hope you will forgive my callous cynicism, but some of those amusing pictures suggest that they may have been doctored at a Photographic Emporium…
*cough*
wow! tr0llz wus mush moar polyte en teh 1870s.
Teh tr0||s had to be politer den cuz uv all teh billy goats still runnin wild.
Naow wii no wut sum ob us wer doin our last incatenation! waterin canz, squee kittehs, teh whoel werks!
Dis maks me wanna re-capshun dese!
*Restains self frum haking ICHC*
When I was your age, the bicycles were visible!
http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BtnPointerCat03.jpg
OMG! ossim!! five burgers foar u!
@@@@@!
Ha! Ai livz in Brighton. Ai nu wi wuz alwaez cuul. 8)
Ai yoost 2 spend awl teh skool holidaiz neer Brighton
And here is a linkie … http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BTNPointerCats.htm
We got a few proto pictures on that one site.
http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BtnPointercat05.jpg
What I’m helping.
http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BtnPointerCat03.jpg
Invisible visible bike.
There were ALWAYS lolcats.
My dad has a whole scrapbook of those kiind of pictures. They must have gotten printed in the local paper in the 1930s when he was a kid.
I’ll see if I can find it and scan a few.
I wantz to favrit dis!
Aye usta kollekt lol-y poast kardz az uh kitten.
dis mai favrit lolcat evvuh.
These are so cool!
Thank you tessm for finding and posting these.
I’m just waiting for someone to find a LOLcat cave painting.
Some fossils were found in Hawaii.
those cats are dead. they’re dead, stuffed cats posed to look cute. back in the early 1900s, when these pictures were taken, exposure time was over a minute and cats wouldn’t sit there that long so they butchered them to make 10 cent postcards. these pictures are making me sick to my stomach….
Yeah, I linked to this article that mentioned that fact before but for some reason the comment didn’t post. Pretty fascinating:
http://www.theawl.com/2010/03/cat-expert-the-shocking-truth-about-omg-cat
Yup, that was my first thought as well.
Not necessarily. The process for creating negative film plates, which allowed for ‘snapshot’ photography, was developed starting in the 1840s. During the American Civil War, Matthew Brady snapped many famous photos, using a camera with a shutter time of around 15 seconds.
Also, cats can be trained to sit still, so it is entirely possible that those cats were photographed alive. In fact, there’s this article:
http://www.onemoreriver.org/11267/index.html
which states just that. Sooo…which is it?
These most likely are pictures by photographer Harry Whittier Frees. There is a book by him ” Cats, Dogs, & Other Rabbits ” that is still available. He stated that no maltreatment of any kind involved, his subjects were not dead or killed.
They are known to be by Harry Pointer (1822-1889)…much earlier than Frees.His advertisements (linked above) say “photographed from life”.
That is way cool. Who know you could learn history thru cheezburger.
Iz evn olda den Happy Cat, pre-dating bad gramma
Someone iz gud taksidermist.
Fotos den rekwired time lapse. No kitteh sit dat dtill fur ten minits needed for gud pcktur.
Is that a ceiling cat on the second photo in the middle?..
That is simply awesome.
Incredibly cool!! We wants all ta antique LolCats in a book with an antique cheeseburger on ta cover!!