Magazine cutaway drawings

[beamcurrent]

I have been trying to find the origin of a particular cutaway drawing of a 1963 BBC Outside Broadcast van.

It is in the style used by Eagle Comics, but I have not found it there, perhaps it is from the likes of "Commercial Motor"

This is an unusual post for this forum, but there is a vast store of knowledge in its users and I hoped someone would know.

A bit more detail about the project here:- www.mcr21.org.uk

[stevehertz]

I'd have thought that that kind of specialist, 'in-depth' picture/article would have come either directly from the BBC, alternatively 'Television' magazine. I cannot read it, but you can clearly see the word BBC is used a fair amount. I'm guessing the Beeb produced it and made it available for others to use, all as good promotion for the good work that they were doing.

[beamcurrent]

sorry the image is so small, my master copy is a poor photocopy and is reproduced at a better size at the bottom of Nick's page

http://www.tvobhistory.co.uk/bbc-mcrs---b--w.html

what is visible is the page number, 14, so part of a magazine. I don't think the BBC is the origin, I would have found that by now. I suspect Pye had a hand in it. The reg number shown, whilst fictitious is similar to the reg numbers of later vans. There were 10 in all.

[Brigham]

Very familiar.
Is it from Look and Learn?

[emeritus]

I wonder if "Looking Into Things" is the title of a book? A quick Google search for this expression produced an Amazon web site advertising a 1962 book of this title by Ronald John Candy, but it is "out of stock" with no information, such as a picture of the cover, provided. The year given for the book is earlier than that of the van, but it could of course be based on a drawing was made available before the van itself had been built.

[Junk Box Nick]

'Looking into Things' suggests regular feature in a magazine and sounds to me to be aimed at a young audience. It isn't the sort of title that would be used in a technical magazine. It is unlikely that the illustration would have been commissioned especially for the magazine. The artwork probably already existed for promotional or technical use and thus was convenient to borrow.

[PaulM]

Brian,

That's probably from 'Look and Learn' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_and_Learn

I started to scour that for our 'Project Vivat' as I suspected that as Eagle had done a brilliant cutaway of our target truck http://projectvivat.co.uk/Vivat/Home.html that Look and Learn may have done something similar. Seems that they may have - ten years later!

Cheers,

Paul M

[ionburn]

I have managed to find my 'Look and Learn Book for Boys' but cannot fin it in there.

I'm certain that I have seen a cutaway of BBC van recently but cannot remember where. As I look at books in sales often I suspect it was in one I was looking at fairly recently. That was a book of various cutaway diagrams compiled into a modern ('retro') publication.

The 'Eagle' is a good possibility see: http://www.bbceng.info/Operations/st...io_ops_top.htm

[PaulM]

The 1961 'Eagle' one you reference is the one that I've just mentioned and is on the link to our 'Project Vivat' website. That's of our target 1954 truck which is the best part of a decade before Brian's project.

By 'book' of 'Look and Learn', is that bound copies of the serial publication or an edited compilation?

Cheers,

Paul M

[ionburn]

Yes Paul - As I was editing and posting, you posted the same but from a different link which I didn't see.

As I said, I had seen a cutaway recently and had a look for my 'Look and Learn' which is a book which I got one Christmas in my younger years. The style of it was not toward cutaway diagrams though.

I do have the odd Eagle annual I have aquired over the years but I am not sure where they are.

[Synchrodyne]

Here's another cutaway drawing, this tine from "Radio and Television Engineers' Reference Book", 3rd edition, 1960:



Not directly relevant to the unit at interest, but it does show that in this case the drawing came from Marconi, who presumably commissioned it. Perhaps Pye TVT similarly commissioned a drawing for its later design.


Cheers,

[beamcurrent]

Syncrodyne, That's another interesting cutaway of the Marconi OB Van with MkIII cameras, but a decade earlier that the one I'm after.

I did explore Look & Learn, there is a website were you can search for images http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-...search=cutaway But I did not find the one of the BBC MCR 19-28 series. This BTW was the last of the BBC commissioned black and white vans, the next ones were the colour type 1 CMCRs

As part of this rebuild project, data as to just were the items of equipment were fitted is sought and whilst I have good info for most of the layout there are still a few uncertainties, one of which is the underneath of the central monitor stack.

There is also a need to try and find any of the original installed equipment that might still survive. Fortunately MCR21 still has a lot of original equipment like the mixing desks, but it like it's sisters was modified to colour around 1970 and much was changed, like the matrix, most of the vision equipment and of course the cameras!

It is thought that at least 2 of these MCRs were exported, at the end of thier BBC service, to Bulgaria and Jordan I wonder if they survive?

[Synchrodyne]

There was also a brief mention of a fleet of Pye TVT MCRs for the BBC in Wireless World 1963 October; not sure whether these were the group at interest ot something different again:




Cheers,

[PaulM]

Brian,

I don't think that the Look and Learn website is exhaustive - it seems to be about images that may have commercial value. The only real way to explore that avenue at the moment is probably to find a set of bound copies in a library etc. There were other imitators of the genre too, so it could have been one of those. British Library index may offer some clues on that but it may come under the Newspaper Archive, but I don't quite know what their remit is with regard to children's publications: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

With regards to others in the fleet surviving, I would be surprised as the standard of the actual vehicle construction (as you know!) is not very good once you delve down to chassis level. The number of aluminium/steel interactions are huge and that leads to all manner of interesting corrosion issues.

Syncrodyne,

Many thanks for highlighting that image - that's one I've not seen before. 'Vivat' was starting from a completely empty (and pretty rotten) shell with nothing in it whatsoever, so any pictures that we could find were seized on! We're still finding things out about the 1954 target build and, as they say, 'every little helps'. It's based on some of the fairly well-known drawings of the time, so there's no surprises (fortunately!).

The 'Eagle' cut-away is brilliant even though there's some artistic licence, as you might expect. It's probably not surprising that the next generation of truck would be featured as a cut-away by a rival publication to 'Eagle'?

Best regards,

Paul M

[PaulM]

A quick 'Google' and the 'Looking into Things' is indeed a 'Look and Learn' series.

Ref: http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-...rugged-biplane

See: top-left corner


Cheers,

Paul M

[PaulM]

I did a bit more on this last night - it's an interesting avenue.

It seems that 'Ranger' the national boys' magazine also ran the 'Looking into Things' series and the publication itself was eventually absorbed into 'Look and Learn'.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_(magazine)

I've never heard of 'Ranger' - you live and learn (as well as look and learn . . .).

Best regards,

Paul M

[emeritus]

Should "Ranger" be "Rover"? Apart from Eagle, the only national magazines for older boys that I remember from the 1950's that were not exclusively strip cartoons were Rover, Adventure, Hotspur, and Wizard. I never read them regularly but saw occasional back numbers passed on to me by an uncle. The only cut-out drawings I recall seeing were the Eagle's full colour centre spreads.

[Mr Moose]

Hello,
This:- http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-...search=cutaway from look and learn is ov a very similar style. It is from March 1966, which is before they took over Ranger magazine.
Yours, Richard

[PaulM]

Definitely 'Ranger'. The link that I pasted missed off the final bracket but it does point you to the right page. I'll paste it again and see if it does the same again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_(magazine))

Just checked and it's done it again - don't know why. I've added the bracket manually so it should work now. ?

I'd missed that atomic sub one on the Look and Learn website - well found!

The Eagle cutaway of our Vivat project is always a talking point as being in colour it's such a contrast to the contemporary photographs. I think that the colour ones look the best and have the most impact. I gather that most of the Eagle ones were colour whereas most of these Look and Learn / Ranger ones seem to be black and white.

Best regards,

Paul M

[emeritus]

Thanks for the correct link to Ranger: it was not my era! I used to get the Eagle every week in the second half of the 1950's, and never saw an Eagle centre spread that was not in colour. Some 20 years ago a work colleague lent me his copy of a then-recently published book that consisted of a selection of life-sized Eagle centre spreads, but I don't recall its title.