Giant Figure of Christ in Odd Church Design (Nov, 1936)
Filed under: Architecture — @ 12:58 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1936
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Tags: religion
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1936
| Buy on Ebay
Tags: religion
Giant Figure of Christ in Odd Church Design
Patents have been issued for an odd architectural design for churches. The plan calls for a giant figure of Christ, to be constructed of burnished copper, which would dominate the church building made of cement in natural stone color. The design has Christ seated on a rock at Gethsemane, with the church entrance in the rock, beneath the flowing robes of the figure. A halo for the figure and illumination for the entire structure would be provided by a system of floodlights.
They gave a patent for this?
Comment by Stannous — March 30, 2008 @ 10:29 am
Must have been something about the construction details that was patented, I think a design would have been copyright.
Comment by Bob — March 30, 2008 @ 10:48 am
Sorry. It’s called a design patent. Here it is, as a matter of fact
http://www.google.com/patents?.....;dq=D90519
Comment by Firebrand38 — March 31, 2008 @ 5:09 am
Thanks, I searched for it but couldn’t find it.
Comment by Stannous — March 31, 2008 @ 8:20 am
It gave me a devil of a time…..
I gotta wonder about journalistic thoroughness back in the day. Nothing on who invented it, or that the patent was from 1933.
Comment by Firebrand38 — March 31, 2008 @ 8:28 am
Firebrand38 » Actually I think that was partially on purpose. The magazines of the time, particularly Popular Mechanics were very serious about the “firewall” between the advertising and content sections. Most PM’s have little paragraphs tacked on the the end of articles saying that if you write in to them they’ll be happy to tell you what company or person did this or that. So you could have gotten the information if you wanted, but they didn’t give companies free advertising. The main exceptions to this are product reviews and places where the company name is impossible to hide (eg, the Good Year blimp).
If you’ve ever seen the Canadian TV show How it’s Made (it plays on Discovery in US) you can see they follow the same policy. They NEVER mention the brand or company that owns the factory, the only time you have any clue is when you see them packaging some of the products.
Comment by Charlie — March 31, 2008 @ 8:51 am
I get that, Charlie. But to not even mention the guys name is carrying things a bit too far. If you ever see the TV show Unwrapped on the Food Network they take the opposite tack (I’m a fan of How It’s Made by the way. I find it fascinating that somebody had to sit down and design that process for mass production).
In this very same issue they made the effort to mention Dr Abbot in connection with his invention http://blog.modernmechanix.com.....am-engine/
Comment by Firebrand38 — March 31, 2008 @ 10:25 am
I agree, they seem quite inconsistent at times. It’s hard to explain just how much stuff is in these magazines. On average I’d say we scan somewhere around one in 30 articles for the site. A 1930’s era PM is about 200 pages completely packed with content. I’m guessing they must have had a whole network of stringers feeding them stuff. Everything from honest to goodness science writers to some guy in a little town mailing in a clipping from the local newspaper. So I think there was a lot of inconsistency to the quality of the reporting.
Otherwise I just can’t see how they managed it. I mean, in terms of raw number of articles I’d say that some of these mags have more content than some of the big gadget websites per month, and all they have to do is link.
If you compare them to the modern incarnations, the amount of content they produce now is rather paltry by comparison.
Actually, come to think of it, maybe I’ll pick an issue and scan the whole page and put it up as a PDF so people can get a feel for what’s inside without my editorial selection.
Comment by Charlie — March 31, 2008 @ 10:32 am
I wonder if it was ever built, and if so what happened to it. There’s no Giant Jesus church in Vancouver, where Mr. Wall came from.
Comment by Blurgle — March 31, 2008 @ 4:10 pm