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German panel 19 x 38 famous illustration
"Der Mensch als Industriepalast" (Man as Industrial Palace) by the German physician and science writer Fritz Kahn. First published in 1926 as a supplement to his book series Das Leben des Menschen (The Life of Man), it is a pioneering work of information design that visually explains human physiology through an analogy with an industrial factory.
The Illustration in Detail
Concept: The poster conceptualizes the human body as a complex and efficient industrial plant or chemical factory.
Visual Metaphor: Organs and bodily functions are represented by mechanical equivalents and little human "workers" operating the machinery:
The brain is a complex switchboard and control center.
The lungs are mechanical bellows.
The stomach is depicted as a rock-sorting mechanism, and the intestines as complex piping and a conveyor belt system.
Different colored pipes (red for arteries, blue for veins, brown for windpipe) show the transport of materials throughout the system.
Cultural Context: The image is a significant cultural product of the Weimar era, reflecting the period's fascination with industrial modernity, rationalization, and the "machine aesthetic".
This illustration remains one of Kahn's most well-known works and is celebrated as a classic example of using visual metaphors to make complex scientific information accessible to a general audience. |
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