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Photographs of Naval Corpsman Arthur B. "Art" Guntner and his career working with the Johnsville Centrifuge at the Aviation Medical Acceleration Laboratory of the Navy Air Development Center Warminster. Capable of generating 40Gs, the Centrifuge was used throughout the early American space program for many different scientific simulations and experiments purposes including as a part of the training of every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronaut.
Born and raised in the mining town of Morgantown, West Virginia, Arthur B. "Art" Guntner joined the Navy in 1958 and graduated from Aerospace Medicine School in 1960. Immediately after graduation, he began as an Aerospace Medicine Technician assigned to the Aviation Medical Acceleration Laboratory at the Johnsville Naval Air Development Center. U.S. Navy's Johnsville Naval Air Development Center (NADC) in Warminster, Pennsylvania was home to 30 different laboratories in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Aviation Medical Acceleration Laboratory, the largest human centrifuge was constructed from 1947 to 1949 and operated in researching the limits of human tolerance for "G" forces. By late 1959, training and research focused on preparing the first Americans for space flight. Given their full schedules, the Mercury astronauts weren't present for early runs or "flights" on the centrifuge. Younger staff members, therefore, served as the test subjects for the initial simulations. While working at Johnsville, Guntner flew over 350 flights in the centrifuge, tested the design of G-suits, and participated in many other classified experiments. He was personally involved in the briefing and training of the Mercury astronauts.
NASM.2011.0037
1960 - 1964
2011
Art Guntner, Gift, 2011, NASM.2011.0037
0.058 Gigabytes
National Air and Space Museum Archives
This collection consists of 42 digital images of photographs on a CD and a few other materials relating to Arthur B. "Art" Guntner's time as an Aerospace Medicine Technician at the Naval Air Development Center in Johnsville, Pennsylvania. Black and white photographs show Guntner as well as other U.S. Navy personnel at work with particular emphasis on the centrifuge. Several astronauts appear in photographs including Alan B. Shepard, Jr., John Herschel Glenn, Jr., and Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom. Some images, likely scans of scrapbook pages, contain Project Mercury postage stamps and news clippings about Guntner. Also included in this collection are promotional materials for the Johnsville Centrifuge and Science Museum from 2011.
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Arthur B. "Art" Guntner Naval Air Development Center Collection, NASM.2011.0037, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
Aeronautics
Space flight
Air pilots
Space suits
Aviation medicine
Naval aviation
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Gigabytes
Born digital
Cd-roms