r/whatisit • u/Hangry-24-7 • 1d ago

New, what is it? Uncle holding something

Post image

Picture of my wife’s uncle as a boy 7 or 8 yrs old. Grew up on a farm in western NY. This picture dates back to around 1947 or 1948. What is the boy holding? Is it a toy? Or some sort of farm tool?

Update — yes this photo was enhanced using ai to take the graininess out of the original picture. My wife is giving a copy of the image to her cousin for an 80th birthday gift along with other photos.

The AI bashing on this post is unbelievable! How come nobody is bashing the fact that I used a scanner to create a jpeg of the image as opposed to creating a duplicate from a photo negative in a dark room and sending out 250 copies thru the postal service?

1.0k Upvotes

68% Upvoted

502 comments sorted by

View all comments

682

u/GroundbreakingTip64 1d ago

Looks like an old blue print case. Any architects?

11

u/More-Flan1369 1d ago

I worked in an engineering office. The rolled plans were kept in cardboard tubes. Blueprints were laid flat in large metal drawers.

10

u/Ok_Principle1016 1d ago edited 1d ago

But we’re talking about how blueprints were stored 80 years ago, not now. Especially IMPORTANT blueprints got metal cases for storage- as they were the final draft of the overall building, and how it was built. People (if they wanted to renovate/add on to the structure in the future) would need this information, and it (being hand drawn) was usually the only copy…so, metal tube for protection was the standard at that time.

3

u/More-Flan1369 17h ago

Your assuming that I was talking about modern times. The office I worked in was The City Engineers office for the City of Haverhill, MA. We had some pretty old, rather ancient, maps, prints, plot plans, etc.

1

u/More-Flan1369 18h ago

Cool photo, I must say.

2

u/Gecko23 16h ago

I think you have to consider that there's more than one way to store and transport a large sheet of paper. The very first drafting supply hit on google sells these tubes, for this purpose. Which would be silly if no-one used them.