Rosie the Riveter Was the Wrong Woman for Thirty Years, and a Caption Glued to the Back of a Press Print Fixed It
In March 1942, the Acme photo agency sent a photographer to Naval Air Station Alameda for a story about what women should and should not wear around machinery. On March 24, he made a frame of a 20-year-old machine shop worker bent over a lathe, her hair tied back in a polka-dot bandanna. Somebody then typed a caption with her name in it, glued the slip to the back of the print, and shipped it out to newspapers.
In March 1942, the Acme photo agency sent a photographer to Naval Air Station Alameda for a story about what women should and should not wear around machinery. On March 24, he made a frame of a 20-year-old machine shop worker bent over a lathe, her hair tied back in a polka-dot bandanna. Somebody then typed a caption with her name in it, glued the slip to the back of the print, and shipped it out to newspapers. ## The Caption Was a Physical Object A wire-service print was a piece of hardware. Acme Newspictures, which operated from 1923 to 1952 under the Scripps-Howard-owned Newspaper…