Blueprint of Great Inventions

Each machine on this sheet is labeled the way a draftsman would label it: 4-4-0 American Locomotive, No. 119; Wright Flyer, 1903; Saturn V, F-1 Engine.

A 4-4-0 has four small leading wheels and four large drivers, among the most common steam layouts in nineteenth-century America. Number 119 is the number the Union Pacific carried on an engine built in 1868 by Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works of Paterson, New Jersey, which met the Central Pacific's Jupiter at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, when the two lines were joined. It was scrapped in 1903.

That December the Wright brothers made four flights at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. The first, on December 17, covered 120 feet in 12 seconds; the last, Wilbur's, 852 feet in 59. The engine, built by their mechanic Charlie Taylor, made about 12 horsepower. Each F-1 on the Saturn V made about 1.5 million pounds of thrust, and five of them lifted the rocket.

The locomotive runs along the upper left, the Wright Flyer drawn beneath it with every strut in fine line. At upper right a curved concrete dam closes a narrow canyon, and below it the nozzle and plumbing of the F-1 fill the lower corner. A bridge crosses a pine-lined gorge at lower left beside a hand-drawn map. It is all sepia ink on yellowed paper, with compass roses and margin notes.