Recalling the Graphics Feast At GM Styling During the War Years

The most seminal moment on how and where the Graphic Engineering profession "began in the first place" is traceable back to a government authorized war services department inside the General Motors Styling Section. The 3-page article fittingly titled, "EXPLODED" ART FOR GRAPHIC ENGINEERING is well documented in a 1944 monthly GM FOLKS magazine (circulation of 500,000), seen in its entirety below, details how this new conscious business activity --- GRAPHIC ENGINEERING --- first evolved as an offshoot of the American automotive design profession. Many seasoned automotive designers and engineers interviewed for an upcoming biography on Harley Earl corroborate this historic event, along with why certain scholarly papers laid buried for so long. 

"With this new art has grown up a new term — graphic engineering." This telling article continues to disclose, "it takes the graphic engineer – the artist – to read the blueprints and transform those readings into exactly accurate pictures of all the parts and what they will look like when put together in completed form." The third paragraph exposes a date of origin: 

"Early in 1942 the Styling Section of General Motors created the Graphic Engineering Staff for the purpose of applying good drawing ability and technical skill to the war effort. The resulting three-dimensional drawings, a few of which accompany this article, have been put to many uses but are valuable principally through making it possible to see a highly complex instrument "exploded," or sectionalized, as a manufacturing aid in assembling, training and familiarization purposes, parts manuals and cost estimating before construction."

Two period letters, below, aid in documenting this uncomplicated history; and it is now logical, that graphic engineering (also known as the designer's legman) first came from a hybrid engineering dept. within GM's highly mechanized world. Dr. Patrick L. Hanratty -- "the father of CAD" -- concurs with how this history first developed inside GM Styling, too (click link below) to read more about his views. Obviously, the pioneer of the automotive design profession (Earl) significantly contributed to Detroit being the foremost expert in volume production by the late 1930s. That's why his Styling Section was in such great demand at a time when the greatest Aerial Arms Race of the twentieth century was taking place. The meteoric rise of Harley Earl's fledgling Styling Section in the years before, during and after WW II mirrors that of the powerful accent made by the United States Air Force (U.S.A.F) within the exact same important time period in American history. This interesting parallel needs to be fleshed out more. 

Among other things, General Motors Styling was contracted to create a 140 page manual for American war pilots titled, FLIGHT thru INSTRUMENTS. This book brought new sparkle and clarity to aviators—explaining all the complicated procedures of instrument flying. In other words, the dream machine of Harley Earl's new graphic engineering department was put to work making something highly complex look simple. A pioneering work, FLIGHT thru INSTRUMENTS became the standard issue by the end of the war whereby the U.S. Air Force deemed it special enough to declassify this book so other sky pilots could gain experience using it. 

As shown above, the Styling Section's second in command, Howard O'Leary applauded his outfit and mentioned the praise of the Bureau of Aeronautics. Again, the book is extremely well written and is laced throughout with brilliantly rendered color graphics and cutaway models of all the precession instrumentation and indicators; notice detailed examples: