Charles Dellschau, who came from Prussia to Texas in 1853, made his living as a butcher. But he was obsessed with the idea of flight and, around the turn of the century, began to create scrapbooks filled with fantastic drawings and collages of speculative flying machines.
In 1969, a half dozen of Dellschau's scrapbooks, containing over 2,500 drawings, were discovered in a junk store in Houston.
(This post on Design Observer contains many more Dellschau images.)
I absolutely adore stuff like this . . . incredibly detailed work produced by obsession.
Dellschau created these books as the (fictional?) records of a secret organization that he called the Sonora Aero Club. He claimed to be the 'draftsman' and record keeper of the club -- a club, the existence of which is in doubt.A commenter on one of the articles I've linked to speculated that Dellschau was a misplaced alien from another place or time who suffered at least partial amnesia and was recording bits of remembered technology.
Works for me.
With thanks to Mario who posted this link on Facebook yesterday --
it's not all cute kittens and silly stuff over there.
