[WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION] U.S. War Department, Ordnance Office. Official Photographic Record of the Ordnance Exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago, 1893
Item #7707
268 vintage albumen and silver prints and 73 photographic reproductions of technical drawings, (most 4"x6"), mounted on 76 disbound sheets of thick gray paper (18"x13.5"); exhibit numbers and titles hand printed in white ink. With an additional eleven board-mounted albumen prints measuring 10.75"x13.5". 1893. A unique photographic survey of arms exhibited at the fair. The first two sheets comprise twelve images of the preparationsùexterior shots of large pieces being loaded in, many on railroad flatcars. The remaining photos depict a wide variety of contemporary and historical firearms, including carbines, rifles, guns, revolvers, canons, fuses, shells, etc., some with related technical drawings. Examples include: Williams Rapid Fire Gun, Maxim Automatic Machine Gun, Chinese Wheellock Pistol, Ballard Rifle, Sharpe & Hawkins B. L. Rifle Carbine, and Mexican & U.S. Mortars. The larger plates are of the stunning War Department floor displays, showing ordnance and engineering works. With War Department Reference Library hand stamps on the pages, this group appears to have been assembled as an official record of the exhibit and is complete, based on sequential numbering of the hand stamps. All of these pages were originally bound together as an album, the detached boards and spine of which are still present; mounting boards of large images are chipped at corners with some loss; occasional fading to portions of larger photos; a few instances of silvering on the smaller ones. Overall, images are very sharp and detailed. |
