The Golden Age of Streamlining

Its most obvious manifestations were on the railways, with beautiful streamlined locomotives in daring colour schemes on prestigious named expresses, especially in Europe and North America. The idea of streamlining made even more sense in the air, where the great airships were crossing the Atlantic, and aircraft like the Douglas DC3 cut through the air more easily than anything that came before. Meanwhile, on the world's roads, buses and cars lost their perpendicular looks and marques like Cord and Bugatti led the way with increasingly aerodynamic, wind-tunnel-tested profiles. Designers like Raymond Loewy, as well as designing streamlined locomotives, began to apply the same style to products for which wind resistance was irrelevant, such as buildings, refrigerators and even pencil sharpeners. This book tells the story of the streamline era, its designers, its successes and failures, its inspiration and its legacy.