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The Early Aeronautical Newsclippings (Alexander Graham Bell) Collection (NASM.XXXX.0086) consists of 19 boxes of material about early aviation and aeronautics collected by Alexander Graham Bell between 1906 and 1912.
Although best known as the inventor of the telephone, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) expressed an interest in a wide range of activities, including aviation. By the turn of the 20th century he was experimenting with kites and kite structures, including his famous tetrahedral kite "Cygnus," which carried a man aloft in 1907 and was intended to be fitted with a motor. Bell supported the experiments of Samuel Langley from 1891 on, and had some influence in obtaining War Department funding for Langley's aeronautical work. After the successful flight of the Wright Brothers in 1903 he formed, with Glenn H. Curtiss, F. W. Baldwin, J. A. D. McCurdy, and Lt. T. Selfridge, the Aerial Experimental Association, which experimented with a number of flying machines before the founders dissolved the group in 1909. Bell's contributions to aeronautics are reflected in his being issued nine patents for various advances in "aerial vehicles" and "flying machines."
NASM.XXXX.0086
Beals, Jessie Tarbox
1903-1974
No donor information, NASM.XXXX.0086, unknown
23.64 Cubic feet (18 records center boxes; 1 11x17x3 flatbox)
National Air and Space Museum Archives
This collection consists of newspaper clippings gathered by Dr. Bell during the early years of aviation. The material, compiled from American, British, French, and German papers, as well as others, covers a variety of subjects from balloon and airship ascents, air shows, races, and record flights, to accidents, technological developments, and applications. The collection ends with an album of photographs of the aeronautical exhibit at the Automobile Show held in New York in 1907. Supplemental indexes were created for the collection at later times. Note: The digital images in this finding aid were repurposed from scans made by an outside contractor for a commercial product and may show irregular cropping and orientation in addition to color variations resulting from damage to and deterioration of the original objects.
The collection is arranged by in the following series: 1. Scrapbooks 2. Indexes 3. Photographs
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Early Aeronautical Newsclippings (Alexander Graham Bell) Collection, Acc. NASM.XXXX.0086, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
Aeronautics
Aeronautics -- 1903-1916
Periodicals
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Clippings