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Chrysler’s World War II Books
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Feb 4, 2025
Looking through four of Chrysler’s books, written by Wesley Stout, on their wartime accomplishments — gyroscopes, radar, the A-bomb, B-29 engines, tanks, tank engines, ammunition, guns, and so on... just leafing through with you.
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[Music]
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so here we have a bunch of books and
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these were all published by
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Chrysler and they were done after the
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war by Wesley Stout a well-known writer
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of the
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times let's
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start with a war job thought impossible
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we open this
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up here's a lovely picture we'll see if
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you can figure out what it is
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and you can see there by Wesley W
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Stout and their all dat Chrysler
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Corporation Detroit Michigan and they
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came out in a 4-year
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span they're all very well
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researched they all have forwards by KT
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Keller and KT Keller KT Keller was
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Walter Chrysler's chosen
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replacement handpicked and he turned out
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to be an excellent War President
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we can just take a look through the book
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and of course you notice one thing which
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is that although the book is in color in
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some
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places and others it's clearly in black
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and white and the reason for that is so
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Color Film was available in the 1930s
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but it was really uh it actually was
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available in the 1800s in theory
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although they had some very strange ways
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of making it but not until the late 30s
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and early 40s did it become more common
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so there weren't a lot of uh color
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pictures available to Mr Stout when he
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did these books and most of the colors
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you'll find are either added later or
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they're uh from drawings or their hand
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tints now this entire book is about
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gyroscopes and crysler's role in the
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engineering and production the mass
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production of
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gyroscopes which was obviously not
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something that ch for was really known
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for or would have done if not for the
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war so a lot of this book is explaining
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the
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gyroscope and here we have one of our
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fake color pictures this is basically
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just a blue tint on black and
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white it's a neat trick to make the book
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look more attractive and it must have
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been very very expensive not just the
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hand tinting in some cases but the
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printing of color in those days was not
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cheap even these spot colors would have
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been uh an expense and an ordeal for the
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printers drawings of course you can do
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much more easily in color than
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photographs so this book is just 51
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Pages it's really the smallest of these
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books and here we have
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great great engines and Great Planes and
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this would be about making engines for
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the b29 bombers or the super Fortress as
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it was called this particular book is
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the only one I've got that came with
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this card and the card introduces the
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book and it introduces Wesley Stout as a
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former editor of the famous Saturday
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evening post you know the thing that
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Norman Rockwell used to do the covers
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for as a printed card they open it up
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all these books are very well bound the
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company clearly spent quite a lot of
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money on them this one which came out in
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1947 you can see that they spent more
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money on because you start it up and the
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first thing that you see is this is
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actually a drawing presumably done from
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a photo provided by boing here's your
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inevitable uh forward from KT
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color then it points out where this big
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Factory was and of course one of the
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interesting things about this plant
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other than that it was massive it was
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air conditioned it was put up in almost
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no time at all so here you can see that
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there's more color illustrations than in
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the previous book some rather large
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photos and this one if you look at it
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very
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closely it looks as though they
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superimposed one photo on to another so
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the group
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shot and the background appear to be
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from different photos although that
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might be a trick of the
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[Music]
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light quite a
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nice photo here of the right Cyclone
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engine and again this was something
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Chrysler had to learn how to build and
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it was done under Mr Tex colar here and
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tex colar who was the manager of the
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plant in Chicago eventually became the
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leader of Chrysler as a
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whole after KT
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Keller so here's an example of one of
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the hand tinted photographs this wasn't
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taken in color this was done later
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presumably with paintbrushes and such
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and in a way you can tell because if you
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look the Machinery is all the blue color
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and that was probably a ttin to all
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appli it at once here's a photo of the
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test cells we look through this book and
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the previous book on the gyroscopes was
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much smaller had much less color in
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it and it was certainly much
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shorter so this particular book is as
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opposed to the last one which was just
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over 50 pages we're now looking
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at 133 p ages ending in a colorized
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photo a black and white photo that was
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clearly colorized with paintbrushes and
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presumably watercolor paints the next
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one out is actually my favorite of the
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bunch tanks are mighty fine things thank
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you thank
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you and this
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book you can see is from 1946 so
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chronologically comes from between the
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others and it covers the rather amazing
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story of Chrysler Learning how to design
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and build
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tanks and again they had to build a
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building and they were making tanks
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before the roof was on the building or
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before the heating system was put in so
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there are some interesting stories about
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that in this
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book and this is a picture of the chore
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tank Arsenal that they built for World
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War II and the US had not made any
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progress at all in designing tanks when
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suddenly the Army realized that they
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desperately needed them and that the on
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that we had were truly outdated and so
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chry squore had to play a large role in
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this famously among other things when
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there was an engine shortage they had to
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design their own engines uh which
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consisted of a bunch of their regular
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civilian flat had six-cylinders put
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together around a common crankshaft
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which turned out to be one of the best
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engines that they
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had again here you can see it they're
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much more generous with the color this
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let's take a close look at this this is
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a black and white photo touched
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up so it turns out that uh Color Film
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although it was available uh starting
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1936 in theory it was very hard to work
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with and prints were not easy to make
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until the ' 50s so you don't really
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expect a lot of color here and the color
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that you do get tends to be like this
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painted in and this is a beautiful job
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of colorization keeping in mind this is
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like w well before Graphics could be put
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into computers so this is a pretty
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amazing job of coloring that somebody
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did probably after making the picture
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much larger then shooting it
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down again clearly a black and white
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photo moved to color somebody did quite
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a nice job have no idea if FDR's car was
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actually green it was a Plymouth most of
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the time FDR and Truman were both Mopar
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guys
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drawings often
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substitute and again we see the
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tinting so this is a book with many many
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pictures but also a lot of interesting
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facts incredible amount of research done
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in these
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books they must have been quite
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expensive for Chrysler to commission for
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Christ Lord to print to have them uh
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hand color the images
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and coloring black and white images was
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actually fairly common in those days and
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if you look at many uh School Portraits
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then you'll see the same thing but they
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really pulled out all the stops this
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would be I don't know what the modern
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day equivalent would be because today it
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is so cheap to print color it's not
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funny but back then it was a big deal it
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was not you know it wasn't prepared by
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computer somebody actually had to do the
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separations prepare a separate place
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plates make sure they are lining
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up and mobilized
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finally is a book which combines a lot
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of the different efforts and a lot of
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the different divisions this was the
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last book in the series as far as I know
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done in 1949 still by Wesley Stout still
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signed by KT Keller in one of his last
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years at Chrysler because uh from there
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he went on to to work in US government
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by their invitation and he absolutely
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was a great leader during the war and a
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terrible leader during the
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pece so here he's talking about
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basically how we used to do uh like
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backyard mechanic stuff and now we do
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research and development showing off the
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engineering
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buildings really this book advertises
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cars much more than it advertises
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Chrysler's war effort in some
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ways showing off their uh electron
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microscope for
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example so again a lot of color a lot of
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money put into this and this is the
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first of the books that really you could
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argue was designed with the idea of
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selling cars as well as selling the
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company and its achievements and it had
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many
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achievements uh this is the radar I did
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an article once for all par on the radar
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it really is amazing what they did they
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had their own people uh dramatically
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reduce the amount of space and weight
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needed to build Mobile radar
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sets and again this is chry for an
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automaker which you wouldn't normally
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think of it makes one wonder what could
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happen today if we didn't use dedicated
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military suppliers but if we instead
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said you know let's throw it open and
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see about what other companies can
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do maybe that's completely impractical
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now certainly it would be harder to
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maintain secrecy so quite a large book
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it covers pretty much everything that
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they were doing back then here's Rockets
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Chrysler had quite a rocket business
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after the
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war including the Saturn rockets that we
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went to the Moon
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with bazookas
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and the plant in swirl
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Quebec need guns there that's not
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normally talked about when we talk about
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Chrysler's military efforts which is
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interesting I have to admit I didn't
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even know about it until this
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book again one of these lovely uh hand
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tinted black and white drawings now they
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bring in cycle weld the people who
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bonded break uh
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pads that was a side business after
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Christ Lord discovered how to do it in
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instead of using
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rivets pressed into war effort air temp
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built air conditioning
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systems that came out of the chryler
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building and it went into work for the
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war and of course the planton Newcastle
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and this was um I think the fourth Plant
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built by Maxwell Brisco it was the
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largest Auto plant in the world at the
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time it was built and I'm pretty sure it
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went into service in
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1907 and it was still in service in to I
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believe
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2004 that's a Parts Plant the Los
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Angeles plant that that came back again
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into the 60s possibly the I think into
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the
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70s so some interesting books I hope
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that you enjoyed looking through them
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with me
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