Reliefs for illustrations
Illustration of the first planned space flight of an artificial satellite using a relief globe in the Look magazine no. 1 1957 (in fact, the first space flight was performed by the Sowjets 1957) [1].
Today, aerial photos and satellite images are easily available. But till the 1950ies, satellite images were not available. So, photographs of relief globes of the earth were used to explain the first planned flights of satellites and to show the globe. But also projected buildings can be illustrated with a photo of a part of an urban relief showing the planned construction.
[1] "Geo-physical" globe, scale about 1:7,000,000 (diameter 6 feet), vertical exaggeration between 80:1 and 10:1 for high mountains, rubber version.
See: Briesemeister, William. Some three-dimensional relief globes, past and present. 1957. p.255-269. and Wilson, Jack. The world in space. The Look geographical atlas. 1957.