Famed Palomar Observatory, just outside of San Diego, CA, had not yet been finished at the time this cutaway drawing was published.
The drawing shows the observatory’s massive 200-inch mirror that, at that moment, was being finished at optical labs at Cal Tech, Pasadena, CA. The disk of glass was 17 feet in diameter, and waste glass produced during the grinding weighed 2 tons.
Source: Popular Mechanics March 1947
I’m not certain when this Rolf Klep cutaway was produced, but the magazine text mentions that V-E Day was upcoming, so I’ll put it at 1945.
This 160 ton aircraft was expected to be able to take 200 passengers from New York to London in 9 hours.
Consolidated ventured that it would build about 15 Vultee Clippers for PanAm immediately following the War.
The RAF’s Typhoon was termed an “Engine With Wings” by Popular Science because of its 2,200 horsepower, 24 cylinder power plant–a massive engine at the time.
The Typhoon carried four 20 mm cannon. With its capacity for carrying two 500 lb. bombs, one under each wing, the Typhoon could be a fighter-bomber as well as a fighter only.
At a loaded weight of 11,300 lbs., it was fairly heavy compared to its sister, the Hurricane, which weighed in at 7,290 lbs. loaded.
This cutaway is from Popular Science, August 1944
The R.A.F. Mosquito was a zippy, nimble aircraft, its fuselage built of plywood on a balsa wood core and its wings made of spruce and birch. Other than mechanical working parts, this made the Mosquito nearly all wood.
The Mosquito’s crew of two could take the 18,500 lb. craft to relatively low altitudes to whisk into position, drop its load, and whisk away.
This cutaway drawing was pieced together from a December 1943 issue of Popular Science.
One of the great things about the old Fortune magazine was how it often treated extremely mundane subjects with great wonder and awe. Not only would they profile the high-level anticts of John D. Rockefeller, William Randolph Hearst, and Henry Ford, but they would take things down to the opposite end of the spectrum and highlight things like the inner workings of an oil well in one of Rockefeller’s fields or the daily routine of one of Hearst’s low-level stringers.
This office building cutaway actually calls itself an “X-ray” of an air conditioning system, and I am not completely certain of its original source in Fortune. I’d guess that it came with some kind of profile of a giant, national air conditioning company, perhaps Carrier.
Not at all the loving detail of the American Standard advertisement I blogged about previously, but interesting nonetheless.