Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #19 of 32

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Constructing the Power House

Ron Miller, who is not only a very fine astronomical artist in his own right but also co-author of The Art of Chesley Bonestell, has most kindly provided a link to the Library of Congress's page about the United States Nitrate Plant No. 2, including a brief history of the plant and what became of it:

Significance: Built as a war measure for the production of ammonium nitrate, a key component in high explosives, United States Nitrate Plant No. 2 became one of the largest plants of its kind with a capacity to produce 110,000 tons of ammonium nitrate per year. The plant and its adjoining industrial town were hurriedly constructed in a nine month period between February and November of 1918 with little regard to cost. After two brief periods of production, one toward the end of 1918, the other in the February of 1919, the 348 acre manufacturing site lay idle for the next fourteen years while Congress and private industry wrangled over bids that had less to do with the nitrate plant than they did with the hydro-power of the adjoining Wilson Dam. As a chemical plant for the production of ammonium nitrate, U.S.N.P. No. 2 was actually a series of discreet plants, each producing an intermediate product in a lengthy and mechanically complex industrial process. On an unprecedented scale, U.S.N.P. No. 2 assembled state of the art technologies for the production of calcium carbide, liquid air, cyanamide, ammonia gas, nitric acid, and ammonium nitrate.

More information and diagrams can be found here.

And for those who came in late . . .

In 1918, Chesley Bonestell was commissioned to create a series of lithographs chronicling the construction of the government cyanamide nitrates plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It would be many years before he began painting the astronomicals that made him famous, but he already had tremendous technique.

The lithographs disappeared from public view not long thereafter.

Recently, my wife, Marianne Porter, and I bought what we think is a complete set of 32 at an auction. We had electronic files made of them, which we'll be posting here, one every weekday until they're all online. Then we'll make a torrent containing the complete collection in high density form, for whomever wants them.

All the images are in public domain. You don't have to ask anybody for permission to download them and you may employ them however you wish.

 

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