JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

This is an interesting addition to the collection (though not designated as a category) of several dozen cross section/tomographic/cutaway technical and medical illustration posts to this blog, though this one has a more complicated and perhaps more tragic history than most. It depicts work being done on the ill-fated Hudson River tubes, which began life as a project in 1874 with construction starting in 1878; unfortunately there were at least three different companies that undertook the difficult project before going bust, and there was also one major disaster in 1883 in which more than 20 workers were killed.  The project got underway for the final time in 1899, and was opened to traffic in 1908.  In the top image workmen are installing a shielding that would later be abandoned, working I think via one electric spark lamp at upper left; below we see a casson in which a number of laborers were, that being sunk lower and lower as the excavations proceed.  

These two images are about-life size from when they appeared in Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig), on 29 January 1881–though they no doubt appeared a few months earlier in Harper’s Weekly or Scientific American or some such.