This identification badge belonged to Lockheed Space Operations Company employee Robert Gilbert, an aerospace engineer who began his career supporting launches at White Sands, New Mexico, and moved to Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1958. He worked on a series of missile and other spaceflight projects until his retirement. The identification badge would have been worn attached to his pocket protector, which also contained pens and pencils, a comb, and a nail file, keeping some of the tools of his trade close at hand during the work day.
Lockheed Space Operations Company was spun off of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company on January 1, 1984 when Lockheed won the Shuttle Processing Contract at the Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg Air Force Base (which had been intended to serve as a second shuttle launch site). In 1994, the company became Lockheed Martin Space Operations after Lockheed Corporation merged with Martin Marietta.
This everyday workplace accessory of an engineer was collected by Gilbert's daughter-in-law, Nancy Yasecko, a filmmaker who grew up in Florida near Cape Canaveral, and whose film "Growing Up with Rockets," released in 1985, is a personal memoir of growing up in the shadow of the United States' civil human spaceflight program. The identification badge is part of a collection of artifacts that Yasecko donated to the Museum in 2012 along with a copy of the film, which is held by the Museum's film archives.
This object is not on display at the National Air and Space Museum. It is either on loan or in storage.