All Stories

When I was working on a collection of the aeronautical papers of Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906), the third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I was struck by the wealth of detail in his research and the meticulousness of his note-taking. And as a man whose interests ranged from astronomy, astrophysics, aeronautics, and bird flight, mathematics, and the reckoning of standard time, Langley enjoyed observing and describing all sorts of processes — and then suggesting improvements.

Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website .

If you're still stumped over what your costume will be for next Saturday's big Air & Scare at the Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center (October 29 from 2 - 8 pm), the photograph shown above, from the July 1918 issue of Die Luftflotte, might provide some inspiration.

The National Air and Space Museum was once again honored to host a space shuttle crew this past Friday. This visit was special because it was the STS-135 crew of the shuttle Atlantis, the historic final mission that returned on July 21. The crew was only four astronauts for this last flight, smaller than the normal seven. 

You know when you're packing up for a move to a new house — boxes everywhere — frantic activity to get everything stored away before the movers arrive,  and you still have to clean out the fridge.

Jobs made a donation to the Museum to support the Beyond the Limits Gallery. He also gave us a NeXT workstation, which we promised him we would use to develop a flight simulator for the gallery. But after some efforts, we eventually gave up. I regret we were not able to make his NeXT donation work. The NeXT computer was tricky to work with, but it did have its fans. One researcher at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland got one, and while we were struggling to program ours, he used his to write a program for the Internet that he called the World Wide Web. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

In 1934, Joseph Dunlap Mountain, a thirty-two year old former Army Air Service pilot, signed on with the California-Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC, now Saudi Aramco) to serve as a pilot, aerial photographer and mechanic on the company’s 1934-’35 survey expedition to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The remarkable twin Voyager spacecraft continue to explore the outer reaches of the solar system decades after they completed their surveys of the Outer Planets. 

This piece is a follow up to the posts below, in which I describe my experience flying a PT-13 Stearman that was used to train Tuskegee Airmen during WWII, from Moton Field, Alabama to Andrews AFB.

  October is American Archives Month—a time to celebrate the importance of archives across the country. In honor of Archives Month, we’re participating in a pan-Smithsonian blogathon throughout the month. We, and other bloggers from across the Smithsonian, will be blogging about our archival collections, issues, and behind-the-scenes projects. We encourage you to check out the posts on all of the participating blogs, as well as related events and resources. You may have heard that the National Air and Space Museum Archives is moving.  The collections and offices are moving from the current location of Building 12 at the Paul E. Garber Restoration and Storage Facility and from the Museum in Washington, D.C. to their new location at the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center