| | Thumbnail | | Creator | Date | Title / Author / Date / Location | Price | | | Description |
| 5343 |  | Details | Kidden, R. U. | 1956 |
| Humorous blueprint for a nuclear powered ship |
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Kidden, R. U. |
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| 1956 |
| LOC:55 |
| $600.00 | Kidden--R--U- | Humorous-blueprint-for-a-nuclear-powered-ship | One-of-a-kind, striking, original humorous cyanotype or blueprint diagram of a nuclear powered ship drawn in the era immediately after WWII when two hydrogen bombs helped end the war with Japan. In 1955, the United States commissioned the world's first nuclear powered vessel, the submarine U.S.S. Nautilus. The world's first nuclear-powered surface ship, the cruiser Long beach, was not commissioned into service until September, 1961.
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Almost every feature on the ship has something wrong with it such that anyone familiar with ship design would find it amusing, yet the overall structure of the engineering drawing with the title block and sections for revisions and specifications, made the drawing seem plausible from a distance. Includes humorous mis-spellings and a crazy network of piping.
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One of the key features is that many of the ship's features are labeled in Russian as well as English, reflecting the Cold-war competition between the two powers. Revision E3 explains "Added Russian translation applying to complete ship to save time when prints are stolen." Other funny bits include:
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<li>Outhouse on the stern is piped into the crew's forward supply tanks.</li>
<li>Floatplane on an upper deck has its floats mounted backwards.</li>
<li>Split-level crow's next is comprised of two stacked birdhouses.</li>
<li>Captains balls mounted on a upper guy wire (they belong on the compass)</li>
<li>Mid 19th-cenutury cannon part of the armament mounted on the bow.</li>
<li>The propeller is misshapen and dinged up.</li>
<li>The vessel is 100 feet long but 75 feet wide.</li>
<li>The plans are checked and approved by R. U. Kidden and I. M. Nuts.</li>
<li>Large pipe for radioactive waste flows into the crew's quarters.</li>
<li>Sickbay is shown stacked with caskets .</li>
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