San Diego Air and Space Museum [CA]

Description

The Museum provides visitors with a journey through the history of flight. Visitors may stand beneath a model of the Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloon of 1783—the first manned vehicle in recorded history to lift man above the Earth. They can view specimens of aircraft from World War I, or marvel at the antics of the barnstormers of the 1920s. Mint condition aircraft help visitors appreciate the increasingly complex technology represented in the classic military aircraft of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and exhibits on space flight project aeronautics into the future.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, research library access, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.

SpaceProgramArchive.com

Image
Photo from Press Telegram, February 1, 1958
Annotation

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, effectively beginning the "space race" with the U.S. that would last throughout the Cold War. Sputnik followed more than 25 years of research by scientists interested in rocket propulsion. This extensive archive presents more than 50,000 scanned newspaper pages, shedding light on virtually all aspects of the space program from 1930 through 2009. A good place to begin is the website's "Timeline" section, which highlights prominent events in the history of space discovery, such as the Guggenheim Foundation's decision in 1935 to support Dr. Robert H. Goddard's research into self-propelled rockets, and the launch of the Challenger in 1985 which made Sally Ride America's first woman in space. It also provides links to newspaper articles. An "Advanced Search" features allows users to input specific search terms and dates and retrieve newspaper pages—primarily from newspapers published in smaller and medium-sized cities in the south, mid-west, and California (Fresno, Jefferson City, Tuscon, Danville, VA) covering those events. The archive's decision to provide full scanned newspaper pages (as opposed to transcribed articles) allows users to better historically contextualize these events with other prominent contemporaneous events.