In April 1969, Physics Today published a photograph of the American Physical Society’s 1932 banquet at the Ambassador Hotel in Atlantic City. The striking group portrait, dense with faces, was paired with an open call to readers: How many diners can you name and locate?
This was more than just a photo caption challenge. It was an ambitious crowdsourcing experiment decades before the term crowdsourcing came to be. The story of this photo, as documented in AIP’s archives, illustrates something special about the physical science community’s memory practices.