1942 ALCOA RESEARCH LABORATORIES PA LINEN POSTCARD

A post card (front & back) of the Alcoa Laboratory on Freeport Road. Lived near the Alcoa Lab and walked by there every day on my way to school. There was a large field next  to it. We played football and baseball in the field. When I saw this on eBay, I had to have it.
      Aluminum Research Laboratories of Aluminum Company of America at New Kensington, Pennsylvania. This building contains important scientific research equipment, including the Templin precision metal-working machine, used for testing specimens. It is the most powerful machine of its kind in the world, for it can exert a force up to 3,000,000 lb. in compression and 1,000,000 lb. in tension at speeds up to 36 inches a minute

Map of Burrell, PA (New Kensington area) in 1867
  The map is 9 3/4" X 11" - Below are some clips from the map.

Description and artist's history below.

 
This is an  illustration, dated 1896. Before the bridge. Story about the artist below

Panoramic map 15 1/2" X 22 1/2"  depicts street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in an oblique perspective view. They show city life with people, horse drawn carriages, ships, and trains in the landscape.
           
    Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on December 21, 1842, and ran away from home at the age of fifteen. Although initially rejected because he was underage, after some maneuvering Fowler was sworn into the 21st Regiment of the New York Volunteers at Elmira, New York, in May 1861.
          He established his own panoramic map firm and in 1870 produced a view of Omro, Wisconsin. This was followed the next year by panoramas of Peshtigo, Sheboygan Falls, and Waupaca, Wisconsin. Morrisville served as a convenient operating center as Fowler began to draw and publish views of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio cities.
       His production of Pennsylvania panoramas was greater than that of any other artist for a particular state. Throughout his career, which extended over fifty-four years, Thaddeus Fowler never ceased to find pleasure in drawing and publishing panoramic maps.
         In a letter to his granddaughter written in 1920, he said that he felt "an unadulterated joy" while sketching a view of Middletown, New York. This was the expression of a man who at that time had been working at his profession fifty years!
        Fowler gained commissions for city plans by interesting citizens and civic groups in the idea of a panoramic map of their community. After one town had agreed to having a map made, he would seek to involve neighboring communities. By noting that he had already secured an agreement for a view from one town in the area, he would play on the pride, community spirit, and sense of competition of adjacent communities.
          By such promotional procedures, he garnered commitments for panoramic maps from a limited geographical area, thus reducing travel expenses. Similar methods were employed by Ruger, Stoner, and Burleigh. Source Library of Congress.