If you enjoy a good mystery, get ready to start sleuthing! This Friday, we will be adding a new group of mystery photos to the Library of Congress Flickr account. A portion of the glass negatives in the Harris & Ewing Collection came to us with no captions, providing many challenging photo mysteries to solve.
The newest additions to the Flickr Mystery Photos album have a theme, in that each image contains an unidentified gadget. The “gadgets” range in size from large machines to handheld instruments. The two photos below didn’t make it into the new set, but I’m still wondering: “What’s this Gadget?” (And should that toddler be touching it?)
[See Update below for more on this object.]
And what’s this? A camera, a telescope, some other device?
If you figure these mysteries out, feel free to sing out in the comments. Otherwise, use the links below to dive into the newest pool of mystery photos in the Library of Congress Flickr account on Friday!
Update: Thank you for the rapid response! Several people identified the item in the first photograph as a radial aircraft engine, and one commenter speculated it might be from the Pratt & Whitney R1830 Twin Wasp. The flying eagle logo just below center does confirm it’s a Pratt & Whitney, but I think we’re looking at the P&W R-1535 Twin Wasp, Jr. engine, based on this entry on the Pratt & Whitney website, and other photos of the engine online. Enjoy other photos in our collections related to Pratt & Whitney production.
Learn More:
- Watch this album in the Library of Congress Flickr account: Mystery Photos – What’s the Story? On Friday, a few dozen new mystery photos will be added to the set for your investigation.
- Revisit our first group of Harris & Ewing mystery photos – mostly solved, but a few tricky ones remain – through the Picture This blog post “What’s the Story?”: Solving Mystery Photos.
- View all of the images in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division’s Flickr account.
- Explore Washington, D.C.’s people, events and architecture between 1905 and 1945 through the photographs of Harris & Ewing, Inc.
Comments (13)
This one was incredibly obvious. It’s a 14 cyl aircraft engine. Google it and you’ll see dozens of similar pictures. Thanks for the interesting pics!
The first photo appears to be an engine cowling.
The first photo appears to be an airplane engine cowling.
I would guess that the top image is the front half of an air-cooled radial engine, commonly used on aircraft in the 1940s.
Not an expert, but that seems very similar to a Pratt & Whitney R1830 Twin Wasp, which served on US Navy aircraft of that time period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_R-1830_Twin_Wasp
The one on the top is almost certainly a radial engine from an aircraft. Your friends over at Air and Space will be able to give you the exact model.
I love this! What a smart way to solve these “mysteries.”
1st picture looks like an airplane propeller.
2nd picture looks like a spotlight.
The squeeze bulb in the second photo suggests an astronomical camera of some kind. Could that be Henri Chrétien?
The second picture is of course the Coates-Smyth death ray developed at Oxford. Both the inventor and the only prototype were destroyed in the tragic accident that occured the second time the device was tested, and it’s never been recreated. Maybe for the best.
Top is a rotary aircraft engine
bottom is a mirror telescope.
the top photo is certainly a RADIAL aircraft engine. the toddler is touching an oil transfer tube located between the Push rod tubes located between two of the cylinders. the second photo is a tough one, I suspect it’s a telescope.
top is an obvious motor for propeller.
Second is probably a telescope.
hello, I remember this small gadget that the beach people would go around and ask beach customers to pose for a picture and then the picture would be put into this tiny gadget and when you looked into it you could see the picture inside and it would be magnified. what was that little gadget called and why isn’t it still around. this was back in the year 1960’s