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 Pont, and many othr places… 5000+ total posts since 2008.

Paper Love–Moveable Paper Prints: the Protos Automobile, 1925

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

The moveable book (flapbook) has long been interesting to me–unfortunate though that in my own fields they weren’t used very often. There are some very notable exceptions–early geometries would occasionally be published with many of the geometric illustrations made to pull out a little with the tug of a string to show you the construction in 3-D. Then of course there are the paper dissection manikins, where you can find nearly-life-sized paper anatomies with hundreds of movable/liftable flaps, and smaller examples of the body and specific organs that can be simple or not simple whatsoever.  These were time-intensive efforts, and in their own way they provided a sort of pre-MRI MRI by revealing the various layers of 3-D objects with 2-D tools–and they’re beautiful and captivating objects.

(And this example is for sale at the blog bookstore, here.)

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This plate appears in Der Maschinenbau. Modelle.Zeichenerklärungen zu den Modellen des Werkes, by R. Georg, printed by Heinrich Killinger in Nordhausen in 1925.  The major detraction here is an old 5-inch tear that has been repaired verso with aacid-free tape, otherwise in nice condition. 

The full image, “unmoved”:

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