The Works Of Fritz Kahn

Above here is an animation by Hennin Lederer, clearly showing the mechanical appurtenance of the human body.....

You can see how the head's been divided into several areas....each compartment has its own function.....like will, reason, acoustics, vision, power station(transmitting operating power to the rest of the body).

The respiratory process and the Cardiac processes are seen in the next part.

The digestive process is shown next in a very riveting manner.......

1. The food is first chewed and it is treated by the enzyme Amylase.

2. It then proceeds to the stomach via oesophagus where it is showered by the enzymes Pepsin and Rennin.

3. Then to pancreas and then to the Intestines.

It all reminds or brings up a picture of the industries and their working during the 19th century.

That the whole job is manual......whatever be the work but behind the curtain there's always a man. Kahn’s modernist visualization of the digestive and respiratory system as "industrial palace," really a chemical plant, was conceived in a period when the German chemical industry was the world’s most advanced.


And here's the original poster.....(click on the image for magnification)

A video of this image at  Man as an Industrial Palace on YouTube

For the meanings of the German terms visit German Terms (Further Reading section)

There are several other illustrations sketched by Kahn. They were very popular in those times but now have been forgotten....The mechanistic view of reality is an idea which has served a purpose in the unfoldment of the human narrative. But an idea which has lost its sex appeal.

This image shows the mechanism of how we see and also the mechanics of a cough....

A Reflex Path Functions like an Automatic Door-Opener

The Auditory Ossicles in our ear function like the Driving Mechanism of an Automobile

This is what occurs when we see an auto and say "Auto"....

This first image “The Cycle of Carbon Dioxide” is a fairly standard illustration showing the carbon-oxygen cycle in its relationship to man and plants. The illustration shows an early example of some of Kahn’s iconic methods, including using lines to depict the rays of the sun shining down and a rather stylized Germanic figure as his representation of man. The illustrations uses color to depict the functional path of the chemicals (an expensive technique at the time) with oxygen shown in blue and both carbon and carbon-dioxide shown in red. The tree has fruit only on the right hand — or carbon — side of the illustration, which is then connected with the man’s stomach, presumably both in terms of input and output.

“Der Kreislauf von Kraft und Stoff”

This is definitely my favorite image of the batch. The engine on the right is compared to the man on the left, with a fruit-bearing tree in the center connecting the two. In the background there are massed silhouettes of both human figures and huge industrial buildings and smokestacks. The comparison between the man and the engine is explicit: both consume the carbon and oxygen produced by the tree and both produce carbon dioxide which is then taken up by the tree, as well as fertilizer in the form of the human’s droppings (Kot) and the engine’s ash (Asche).

The title itself, “Der Kreislauf von Kraft und Stoff” (the cycles of virtue and substance) suggests more than just a objective illustration of how machines exchange chemicals in ways analogous to humans and plants or a pedagological method. The suggestion, I think, is the nourishing effects of industrial production on nature.

Later, while compassing the east and west of the internet to know about Kahn's works I came across a Wordpress blog "Too Many Interests" with a post titled "Illustrating the Incomprehendable". It had the following images which I would like to include in this post

In 70 Years the Man Eats 1,400 Times its Weight

Titled “In 70 Years the Man Eats 1,400 Times its Weight” it purports to show the amount of food the average man eats in 70 years as train cars full of food.

Kahn uses industrial metaphores to show incomprehensible numbers. Named “The Amazing Pump Within Our Bodies” this illustration uses a tanker trunks and a skyscraper to illustrate the amount of blood the heart pumps during one’s lifetime.






























This was all I could dig out, the rest is up to you........if u liked this man and his works then go and search more of him.......