At the time of the first Lockheed Constellations, airliners fitted with a weather radar were not common, and the navigator was not placed in the airplane nose. Thus, the nose seems to be mostly dead space.
Was the nose dead space with no useful equipment in it, or was it used for equipment I don't know about?
(Source)
Externally, the Connie (shown above) had lights, with the red being the now obsolete passing light.
From the high-res DC-3 and DC-7 cutaways, all sort of stuff, from autopilot oil and air filters, wiring, windshield spray systems, to hydraulic reservoirs.
There wasn't one main object like there's now, nor was it completely empty. Its main aerodynamic function remains though.
