JF Ptak Science Books: Steam-Punk Tee-Shirt Rocket Ship Pilots (1932)

A Daily History of Holes, Dots, Lines, Science, History, Math, Physics, Art, the Unintentional Absurd, Architecture, Maps, Data Visualization, Blank and Missing Things, and so on. |1.6 million words, 7500 images, 4.9 million hits| Press & appearances in The Times, Le Figaro, Mensa, The Economist, The Guardian, Discovery News, Slate, Le Monde, Sci American Blogs, Le Point, and many other places... 5000+ total posts since 2008.. Contact johnfptak at gmail dot com

WWI Photography Catalog

Google search

The Fine Print

The History of Ideas Blog by John Ptak is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at longstreet.typepad.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.thesciencebookstore.com.

« The Business-End of a 120'-Tall Fall | Main | Neutrons, Positrons, & Hell--the Epic of the Fall of Man Suggested in the Physics of 1932 »

Steam-Punk Tee-Shirt Rocket Ship Pilots (1932)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

This creative vision of the future appears in Popular Mechanics (May 1932) and while picturing zeppelin-like space ships with stubby retractable wings traveling at 15,000 mph, it also depicts pilots in a very informal attitude of dress...they're also in a relatively cavernous command center with big gleaming instruments, including a very large compass and a very impressive graphical printout of some sort. Anyway it looks like a lot of big and heavy stuff in a big and bulky command center, which means the ship would've been bigger and bulkier, and who knows what was going to get it to the desired altitude of 600 miles for it to make its 15-minute Paris-Chicago flight. I think the sleeveless underwear deserved an explanation, but it found none.