Chesley Bonestell's Lost Industrial Lithographs #6 of 32

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The Drainage Canal

 The same scene as yesterday, but a different artistic take on it.

What is extraordinary about the nitrates plant is that the entire project, from start to finish, took less than a year. Chesley Bonestell was there for the beginning and he was there at the end. People knew how to build things fast back then. Also--as you'll soon see--huge.

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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