Friday, September 23, 2011

Space Travel (1958)


The words fail me.  Here is a great book written by Dr. Kurt Spielberg. He was a PhD in physics and taught at City College of New York at the time. He is world famous for his work in Operations Research.

Some cool space art pictures from a wonderful children's book. Enjoy!

Spielberg, Dr. Kurt. Illustrated by Hutchinson, William M. Space Travel. New York: Maxton Publishing Co. (28 p.) 27 cm. (1958)




A simple book covering all aspect of space travel including history, physics, U.S. and Russian space efforts, building a space station, manned exploration of the Moon, and exploration of the planets. It has wonderful paintings of all these things devoting a page or two to each topic. "A Maxton Book about" series. See 1960 update and 1963 UK Reprint.



I like the claws on this space suit.
 
 
One of my favorite space paintings.

10 comments:

  1. lurker posting ... you have one of my favourite blogs - and these illustrations are pretty special. Do you have any higher res versions of the images?

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  2. I'm with ZenFancy on ths one! I love your blog, and don't tell you often enough.

    Please keep up the good work!

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  3. Thank you ZenFancy and Allen's Brain. I do this blog because I find this stuff very cool, it is nice that others feel the same way.

    John

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  4. Hey John a big thank you from me too!
    Always nice to see something new from you pop up in my reader :)

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  5. Hi there, I just saw your Boing Boing and I'm instantly in LOVE.

    I'll second Zenfancy's comment though--if any of these scans are yours it would really be stellar (Ha! Get it?) if you could post them at high resolution. Enarging them after the fact detracts from their fabulousness.

    Anyway, these are GREAT finds and this will be a regular stop for me from now on! :D

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  6. I used to have a plastic model of the spaceship from picture #4.

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  7. The images are from scanning done over the past 15 years. Back in the dark ages some of these were scanned small (when memory was more expensive). I own (almost) everything I blog about but with hundreds of books it is hard to find the older ones or to take the time to improve the scans. I have about 4 GB of scans so far and keep adding more.

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  8. I think I remember this one. It was already a bit dated when I read it in the mid 60s, but I didn't know that, and loved it.

    The spaceship model based on #4, or vice-versa, was re-created a few years back. I bought and built it, and it is on my mantelpiece!

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  9. I remember this book as a small boy while my sister did music lessons.It was at a private house and the lounge room was the waiting room.The owner had lots of books for the parents to read while their children did their lessons in a converted bedroom.
    I looked over that book every week.To this day I have a draftsman desk.From time to time I will design a retro Moon rocket or lander.The book inspired me that much.

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  10. My late father, Dr. Kurt Spielberg, wrote the entire text for this book in 1958. He was a PhD in physics and taught at City College of New York at the time.He is world famous for his work in Operations Research. When the book was published, a mistake was made and the artist was given top credit for this book. This was an error. The art is great, but that artist did NOT write ANY of the text. Would you please correct this so that the credit is corrected attributed to my father? In the mid-60s, this book was in my fourth grade class library, and none of the other children would believe me when I told them that my father was the author. But he was. He was a great man, had a career that spanned decades at IBM, and is sadly missed. Thank you.

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