Scientific American, Vol. 5, No. 31 (1850)
Scientific American volume 5, number 31 from 1850, a weekly American periodical of mechanical inventions and patents, aimed at engineers, mechanics and manufacturers. Its pages pair short descriptions with precise line engravings of machines, a boat and a drying apparatus, showing parts in plan and elevation with lettered reference marks. A designer could take from them the clean hatched line work, the labelled diagram conventions and the dense mechanical detail of mid-nineteenth-century engineering prints.
