Martin J. Collins with Jo Ann Bailey and Patricia Fredericks
INTRODUCTION
PROVENANCE
This catalog describes the contents of
several oral history
projects conducted within the Department of Space History,
National Air and Space Museum, over the period 1981 through 1990.
These projects include:
In addition, the catalogue
contains a group of interviews on the development of missiles at
Peenemünde. These interview sets were created
by curators and historians at the museum as part of individual
research projects,
but also with the intention of securing the recollections and
insights of historical participants for preservation and use by
other scholars. Each project had different origins. The STHP
interviews, for example, were part of a contract history with the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), while the
GWS had its genesis in discussions with James E. Webb, second
administrator of NASA, on the need for documenting the early
years of civilian space activity. 1
Each interview was audio-tape recorded,
transcribed, edited, and provided with an abstract and table of contents.
This catalog is a compilation of individual interview abstracts and
tables of content. In total, the catalog describes over 850
hours of oral history interviews with more than 200 interviewees.
This catalog supersedes an earlier catalog covering only the
SAOHP published in 1985.
HISTORIOGRAPHIC ISSUES AND THEMES
The interview sets contained in this
catalog represent an
exploration of the complex topography of science and technology
in the United States after World War II, with special emphasis on
the development of the space sciences; the creation of an
extended scientific and technical advisory apparatus to NASA and
the military; and management and political themes in space
history. Each interview set focuses on a particular nexus of
institutions, experts, and political decision-making. Together they comprise a set of case studies, providing detailed insights and highlighting common threads in the organization of postwar science and technology.
These oral histories bear on a
central problem of
contemporary historiography: the relationship among science,
technology, and the state. The researchers who conducted the interviews decsribed in this catalog have been concerned with articulating
useful strategies for understanding circumstances key to the postwar period--the close interaction among the institutions of science, technology, and politics, and among knowledge, practice, political interests, and funding. The oral histories have drawn on the recent, substantial body of historiographic literature in the field to suggest critical problems and questions. An earlier
historiographic view of science and technology as socially autonomous activities (either in the Mertonian sense as independent social institutions or as cognitively independent domains of knowledge) seemed inadequate to the complexities of the postwar period. More productive were recent researches interpreting science and technology as processes of knowledge acquisition and as social enterprises. One element of this literature useful for studying the history of U.S. space programs has been an exploration of how to describe and account for the interpenetration of science, technology, and society, and how these specialized forms of knowledge have achieved distinctive status in modern society. These explorations have raised basic problems, suggesting new ways of analyzing what counts as science and technology, and, thereby, the perceived boundaries between science and technology and other
social activity. Where such boundaries may be identified, the problem (from the historiographic perspective of this literature) has been to account for how they were
constructed by relevant actors, not to regard them as a priori natural. Viewing science and technology in this light suggests different perspectives and questions, such as
how knowledge production may be affected by the interests of
sponsors, politics, or the marketplace, as well as the corollary
problem of how knowledge production, the disciplines, and
professions may serve as instruments in reconstituting social
relations.2
This historiographic shift has important implications for
the practice of oral history.3 A narrow focus on theory and problem-solving in the
laboratory or on scientists, engineers, and their professional
organizations would not capture the varied professional roles of
modern scientists nor the network of institutional connections linking science, technology, and the federal government after World War II. Current historiography
does not regard these points of emphasis as antagonistic. Rather
the laboratory may be perceived as a nexus in which
scientific and technical practice intersect with other institutions, interests, and politics.4
A working assumption
of these interview
sets is that modern science and technology as embodied in space
and national security activities are most usefully seen through
several interdependent lenses: as specialized research and
practice, as social institutions and networks, and as a venue for
interest group and electoral politics. The interaction of
scientists, universities, and professional
organizations; government agencies and offices ranging from the
military services and NASA to Congress to White House and the
Office of Mangement and Budget;
and the aerospace industry and its trade associations are all potentially germane to understanding the relation
among science, technology, and government in postwar America.
Each element of this matrix has had an interest in shaping
policy, the fate of particular programs, the choice of specific
technologies, the content and direction of research, and in
configuring relations that affect the distribution of
resources and power.
As the interviews in this catalog
were collected over a
decade, the historiographic toolkits of the principal
investigators evolved over time. Interviews conducted in the
early 1980s as part of the SAOHP were more narrowly focused on
scientists, researches and experiments, and their institutional settings.5 Changing historiographical perspectives were increasingly
incorporated into later projects as interviewers became more familiar with the recent
literature. Equally important, however, was the experience
gained by conducting and analyzing interviews as oral history
projects progressed. The interviews themselves provided the
grounds for applying the perspectives of recent research in the history of science and technology. The ways in which scientists, engineers,
managers, and others described their actions, in outline, were
represented more fully in the newer historiography than in the
old. In turn, the interviews conducted provided insights into
the strengths and shortcomings of the historiographies
employed.
While the principal investigators for
each of the interview
sets differed in the details of how to describe the activities of
science and technology in the postwar period, each did share
common points of orientation derived from more recent
historiographical perspectives.
One was an openess toward what
counted as scientific and technical activity and toward what
scientists and engineers do in their work. The functions of
managing, advising, or lobbying were regarded as potentially of
as much interest as theorizing and experimenting. In the postwar
period, the former activities often helped to define the context
within which the later took place. The second commonality was to see the extensive network of institutional linkages characteristic of the postwar period as a phenomenon to be studied. This entailed crafting oral history
projects to include interviews with individuals from relevant
parts of a network (for example, from government agencies,
Congress, and industry) who played different roles in shaping the
relationship among science, technology, and the state. The third
commonality, given the institutional complexity characteristic of
space and defense projects, was to interview individuals at
different levels of organizational hierarchies. Such effort was,
in part, designed to capture the contributions of different
functional roles, but also to contrast the perceptions of those
who "did the work" with those whose responsibilities
were more managerial or concerned with relations with other
institutions.
A final shared perspective was an appreciation that individual
research sites, agencies, or offices often had unique cultures or
styles that were expressive of their approach to organization,
problem-solving, and interaction with other institutions or the
larger political culture. Given the close interaction
between such entities and national bodies of policy and decision-making in the
postwar period, local cultures and practices could be critical to
understanding larger patterns of institutional relations as well as
scientific, technical, or political change.
These historiographic points of
orientation, in sum,
encouraged selection of a range of interview candidates who
performed distinctive roles in defining relations among science,
technology, and the federal government. They also directed questioning toward
the multiple roles (and their interrelation) that scientists,
engineers, program managers, administrators, and other actors
performed in their work. Since the interview sets are case
studies with particular goals and limitations, each exhibits a
different distribution of interview subjects, based on the
particulars of the historical episode investigated, the
accessibility of interviewees, the resources
available for conducting interviews, and the principal
investigator's research aims.
Each gives varying emphasis to questions that probe work
activities, roles, and perceptions of relations to other
professionals and institutions. A brief outline of thematic foci
and contributions for each of the interview sets follows.
SCOPE AND CONTENT
The Space Astronomy Oral History Project
The SAOHP examines the early use of
rockets and satellites
over the period 1946 through the early 1960s to study the upper
atmosphere and space. The interview set contains 225 hours of
interviews with 56 individuals. The focus of this
collection is how the availability of new technologies,
first the rocket and later satellites, helped to create
a new institutional framework for research. The key elements
of this framework were parts of the military, such as the Office of
Naval Research and the Naval Research Laboratory, the Johns
Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Army's White Sands
Proving Ground, and the Air Force Cambridge Research Center; a
small group of universities and scientists, such as the
University of Iowa and James Van Allen; research coordinating
bodies such as the Upper Air Rocket Research Panel; and, at the
end of the 1950s, NASA. The new technologies attracted a
specific group of researchers: primarily physicists, civilian or
military, who had an attachment with military laboratories, such
as the Naval Research Laboratory or the Johns Hopkins Applied
Physics Laboratory. Traditional astronomers were initially not
inclined to pursue research via rocket or satellite. The new
technologies carried a greater risk than those associated with
observatory practice. The rocket was a fragile, unreliable
device, posed special challenges as a laboratory platform, and
space itself was a harsh environment for which to design
effective instruments. Scientific research had a close
interdependence with specific technical problems, ranging from
the availability of rockets of adequate lifting capability and
reliability to the development of accurate satellite pointing controls, essential for useful observation.
This framework linking scientific research and rockets in the postwar period developed from a mutual interest in retaining scientific and technical
expertise as a military resource, an arrangement which deepened as the Cold War intensified in the 1950s. Support of science using rockets and satellites
was one means of advancing these new, complex technologies. Such
support also served to define a set of mutually beneficiary (but
sometimes contested) relations between the research communities and
the military. Each side brought something to the table. The
scientists brought expertise; the military brought a high level of resources, by prewar standards, and the politics of national security.
The military provided the rockets, their accompanying technical
and administrative infrastructure, as well as support for
military laboratories and for university-based scientists. This
scale of investment could only be provided through the government and could only be mobilized due to the political
exigencies of the Cold War. The interaction between the practice of science and the needs of the military in this field is still an area for study. The interviews do suggest
that the research domain of the space sciences, while building on
prewar concerns of physics and astronomy, was strongly shaped by
problems of special interest to the military.6
In this early period after the war, the
emerging, small
community of space science researchers had a relatively informal
relationship with their sponsors, of which the Navy was key.
Research was small-scale. Experiments while technically
ingenious were not complex, nor were they expensive by later
standards. The professional mechanisms for regulating the early
space sciences reflected these factors. The process of
submitting proposals for experiments, of reviewing and selecting
proposals, and of awarding grants and contracts was based on
personal relationships and direct participation in such
coordinating groups as the Upper Air and Rocket Research Panel.
The smallness of the research community and its close and
informal ties with the military gave this period a distinctive
character, and laid the professional and institutional
foundations for the greatly increased level of space activity
that followed Sputnik. The narrative threads suggested by the
SAOHP interviews bear comparison with developments in other
research fields closely allied with the military. The interviews
demonstrate that the space sciences were part of the larger transformation of the relations of science and technology with the military.
part of the larger drama of science, technology, and the military
in the early Cold War.
STHP, too, is an examination of the
space sciences,
predominantly astronomy, from the 1970s through the mid-1980s,
but viewed through the lens of a particular undertaking, the
Hubble Space Telescope. This topic is documented through 235
hours of interviews with 80 individuals. By the time of active
planning for the Hubble (first called the Large Space Telescope,
then simply Space Telescope), research implemented via space
technologies had become part of astronomy's reportoire. These
interviews, then, mark a different stage in astronomy and the
space sciences. The principal problem here was not legitimating
space-based research but rather configuring new working
relations among the space sciences and sponsors. In part, this
shift was a consequence of the more complex political framework within
which space sciences were situated after the 1960s.7
The Hubble represented a pronounced
trend away from the
comparatively small-scale research characteristic of the space
sciences in early years of the postwar period. Hubble, like the
building of massive particle accelerators in physics, was
"Big Science," and was embedded in a more complex
political economy.
Here the primary sponsor was the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, which with its establishment in 1958 managed
nearly all of the support for space science. By the time of
Hubble, the space sciences were distinguished by several
well-organized research communities, of
which optical,
ultraviolet, and planetary astronmers were central for the
telescope. Each had distinct interests, which occassionally came
into conflict, especially when there was competition for limited
payload space and funds. Each had built highly formalized ties
to NASA through the establishment of advisory and review boards
for planning research projects, and for evaluating and selecting
proposals of scientists. This formalized, mutual interdependence
of NASA and space science communities distinguished the Hubble
era from the early period.
A more important distinction, however,
was that the Hubble,
as "Big Science," required substantial federal
appropriations.
The ability to implement the project was not just a matter of
agreement between NASA and relevant scientific communities, but
equally a challenge of building and maintaining a consensus in
Congress and the Office of Management and Budget over a period of
years. The Hubble, in its politics, was akin to a military
weapons system. As with a weapons system, Hubble meant jobs in
congressional districts, both through industrial contracts and
work for NASA field centers such as Marshall and Goddard. As with a weapons systems, the telescope could be presented in persuasive public rhetoric:
the benefits of science rather than the necessities of national
security. The cost of Hubble (which would eventually approach
2.5 billion dollars), of course, meant that it would have
detractors among scientists and Congress. But it also meant that
the project would have powerful allies among those who would
benefit. It was this basic political calculus which encouraged
both NASA and some in the space science community to define
research in terms of very large projects--not just in optical
astronomy but in other areas as well. The chances for
marshalling congressional support were perceived to be greater.
A key feature of the Hubble story revealed in the interviews is
that scientists themselves were critical actors in organizing the
network of political support that would sustain the project. The
astronomical community associated with Hubble, in short, learned
how to behave as a political interest group and move the
legislative process to a favorable result.
The political economy of the Hubble
extended beyond
congressional interest group dynamics and success in the
annual budget wars. The telescope
as built (its design, capabilities, and objectives) became a
concrete representation of relations and conflicts among scientists, NASA, the military, the Office of Management and Budget, and
industrial contractors. The telescope's political fortune and technical design, for example, were linked to the struggle over
NASA's Space Transportation Vehicle (Shuttle), the major manned
effort to succeed the Apollo program. One element of building
support for the Shuttle was to identify payloads, such as the
Hubble, which would use the new launch vehicle. Hubble had to be
designed to be launched aboard the Shuttle. But the key
determinant of Shuttle payload design was creating a craft that
would serve military needs, since the Shuttle was to be the
primary launch vehicle for both military and civilian space
programs. The linkage of the Hubble design to the military was
even more intimate. The optical technologies required for the
Hubble primary telescope were most fully developed in military
recconaissance satellites of the KH series. The close connection
between military technology and the Hubble was evident in the
selection of contractors to build critical parts of the
telescope. Lockheed was responsible for building the spacecraft
structure and for systems integration and Perkin Elmer (now
Hughes Danbury Optical Systems) was responsible for building the
primary mirror. These companies had previously undertaken
similar technical roles in the military reconnaissance program.
One of the special contributions of the STHP interview set is its
exploration of the work of these contractors and their
interaction with NASA and the science community.
The STHP interviews map a broad professional and institutional terrain covering
scientists, universities, a myriad of advisory and planning
groups, and professional organizations; NASA, its offices, and
field centers; Congress and the Office of Management and Budget;
and aerospace contractors. They examine how scientific and
technical judgments on the design and operation of the telescope
intersected with traditional politics and the politics of key
institutions, as well as the marketplace. An example of the former is the linkage of the overall telescope configuration with the politics of the Shuttle. An example of the latter is the
interplay of the military, NASA, electronics manufacturers, and
scientists in the selection of charged couple devices over
competing technologies as the key sensor technology for the
telescope. Political interests and scientific and technical
judgments were inextricably linked in technologies of the
telescope. Particular choices were the result of negotiations
and confrontations among the relevant interests. Perhaps the
most useful insight of the STHP interviews is the multifaceted
ways in which science, technology, and politics intersect in
"Big Science."
The Glennan-Webb-Seamans Project for Research in Space
History
This interview set takes a different
focus from the SAOHP
and STHP. In the latter, the principal focus is on science and
its institutions. In the GWS, the emphasis is on NASA management
practice during the Apollo program. While science has been an
important element of U.S. space programs, substantially more
resources have been devoted to other activities such as manned
space flight and military applications. These programs have been
instrumental in defining the overall structure of the space
effort as well as the practices of key organizations such as NASA
and relations among the military, NASA, and the aerospace
industry. A working assumption of this research effort was that
administration and management in NASA were a means by which broad
policy and political goals of the President and Congress were to
be translated into specific technical achievements, such as
landing men on the moon. The role of management is explored
through 193 hours of interviews with 22 individuals.
Management practice at NASA had
two inter-related
purposes, one directed toward external relations, the other
toward building and operating space technologies. Management practice was to sustain and advance the political decisions and Cold War goals which made the
space program possible. At the same time, such practice was crafted to
organize, direct, and control the myriad resources required to
implement a program in space. These dual concerns could be found in a
number of practices that have been part of the stock and trade of modern
bureaucracies. These included designing organizational
structures, particularly between NASA headquarters and NASA field
centers; defining authority for making key managerial or
technical decisions; gathering and controlling
information; establishing criteria for project
management; reviewing and
selecting contractors for major projects; and specifying the types of contracts offered to industry; and others. These practices defined relations among managers at different levels of the
bureaucratic hierarchies, as well as the relations between those
responsible for policy, planning, and external relations and
those who carried out the nitty-gritty implementation of
projects. They were part of the contentious process of defining and allocating authority and power in the organization. And given the special leverage that NASA and the military had as the buyers of
specialized hardware and services from the aerospace industry,
some of these practices were instrumental in defining the
government-industry relationship and corporate organization and
programs. Management practice in the operating agencies, such as
NASA, was one means by which government organized and controlled
the resources of science and technology for particular ends.
The interviews examine various aspect of
NASA's management
practice in the Apollo program, taking a vertical slice through
the organization from NASA's top management in headquarters to
management in the NASA field centers. A strategy of the GWS was
to interview intensively (over 10 hours) key individuals to
explore fully the ways in which management practices integrated
scientfic and technical with political concerns. The
institutional cross-section of NASA was then juxtaposed with
interviews of the agency's industry contractors to assess differences
in mangement practice as well as their perceptions of the
NASA-industry relationship, especially as compared with
industry's relations with the military. One finding of the
interviews was that NASA's working arrangements with industry
differed in important respects from military practice. NASA attempted to use its field
centers as sources of technical knowledge which would direct the
design, development, and production work of industry. The
military tended to give more latitude to industry's technical
expertise. Another theme was to trace the historical connection between
NASA's management practices with those employed by the Air Force
in the ballistic missile program. Several of NASA's key
personnel were originally trained in the ballistic missile
program and imported military techniques of program management
into Apollo. Such techniques for controlling technical design,
research and development, systems integration, testing and
evaluation, and contract management
were important tools for
linking together, coordinating, and controlling the myriad
government, industry, and academic institutional sites involved in Apollo. These
techniques provided a means of centralizing control over work distributed across private and public instituions and dispersed across the country. Additional practices
developed by the NASA Administrator (such as selection of
contractors for major projects) supplemented these, and made them
responsive to the larger political environment.
Given the extensive size of the Apollo
program, the GWS
interview set is only an initial exploration of management
practices in "Big Technology" sponsored by government.
This interview set examines the
development of the German
Peenemünde rocket complex from the early 1930s through World War II.
The set consists of 39 hours of interviews with 13 individuals,
and has special value from several perspectives. Peenemünde, with the support of the Nazi state, represented the first systematic effort to develop
and use rocket technology. The interviews focus on issues of technical
and management practice at the German rocket complex. Following the themes of the previous oral history sets, the Peenemünde interviews provide insight into the relations among science, technology, and government sponsorship, thus offering an
opportunity for cross-national comparison.
The Peenemünde case, of course, is also significant because of its link to the Cold War.
The interviews suggest that Peenemünde provided
organizational and technological models for subsequent Cold War
efforts in the Soviet Union and United States. Knowledge and
practices generated at Peenemünde migrated to the Cold War
antagonists through the retention of German engineers and
managers in both countries. The German legacy in the U.S., while
a minor theme of the interviews, is especially germane for
understanding aspects of military and civilian
space programs.
It is important to note that these
interviews do not purport
to provide direct evidential access to the past.
Conducting oral history interviews is a creative process. They
are the product of the interaction of the interviewer and his/her
knowledge and the interview subject and their memory. How
interview subjects constitute memory, as individuals and as part
of an oral history, has been a critical issue in the practice and
use of oral history. A prominent view among oral history
practioners is that memory is often instrumental. It may be characterized
by the use of narratives which help to organize the complexity of the past and may serve specific personal and
social purposes. As elicited through oral history, memory is not a simple representational mirror of past
events. Researchers collecting interviews for this catalog have tried to respond to the different ways in which the past, memory and oral history may interact. Accounts of events, activities, and relationships may have historical value, but with the clear recognition that such accounts may be selective and organized according to certain interpretive perspectives. In this regard, oral history presents
the same complexities as written evidence and needs to be
scrutinized with the same canons of judgment. Interviews, of course, also embody the interpretive assumptions of the interviewer through the content and assumptions of the questions asked. Again, this is a historiographic issue that pertains equally to
the interaction of scholar with written evidence.8
What then is the value of oral history
interviews?
This question may be considered in several ways. Interviews
stand as an expression of the narratives that scientists,
engineers, managers, and others may use to organize their own
experience and give it meaning.
Such narratives often combine perspectives that
focus on individual biography (linking choices and actions with
personal values) and those that focus on their social and
professional roles (which often correlate their work with
professional norms, institutions, and other social structures).
On this level, interviews represent how subjects present their
own history. One goal of oral history, then, is to draw out these personal accounts, to identify and
relate prevailing narratives, and to analyze them. In practice,
the interviewer works with interviewees to present their
narrtives and to get them to question and extend
their accounts.
Questions that provoke description and perceptions of process
precede those that elicit perceptions of motivations and causes.
The presence of a questioning interviewer distinguishes oral
history from autobiography.
This aspect of the dynamics of
interviewing has two
implications for oral history practice, both of which center on
preparation for an interview through grounding in the relevant
primary sources and secondary literature. Such preparation helps
to identify prevailing narratives that professional groups
utilize to organize their experience. In addition, careful
preparation helps to identify documents that provide
opportunities for questioning or unpacking narrative accounts.
For the interview sets in this catalog,
one organizing
narrative common among scientists, engineers, and other
professionals is the independence of scientific or technical
practice from influences perceived to be external to the
laboratory, such as the interests of a sponsor. Research
agendas, approaches to problems, choice of instruments, the
presentation and interpretation of research results, and other
aspects of knowledge production are perceived to be separable and
discrete from other social activities. Accounts of discovery,
invention, or day-to-day laboratory practice often are structured
by such assumptions. One goal of interviewing, then, is both to
elicit this narrative and to examine its assumptions.
Interviewing may also build upon the
absence of organizing
narratives in areas of activity recognized to be of consequence.
A key example here is the perception of scientists and engineers
that their professional activity had an important social
component, especially as advisors, contractors, and sometimes
employees of the government. The postwar period saw an
acceptance and elaboration of such roles, as expert knowledge was
actively incorporated into the management of the extensive
national security and space enterprises of the federal government. But unlike
work in the laboratory, professional activity in these social
venues generally has not been defined by a well-articulated
narrative. Rather these activities have been presented as
what interviewees perceived them not to be.
Their activities were neither part of the world of the
laboratory, nor were they viewed as fully part of the life of
government bureaucracies or of politics.
Professional norms associated with the laboratory
or disciplines were perceived to distinguish experts from
bureaucrats and politicians. This narrative structure for
presenting the experience of experts in the new public roles of
the postwar period offers a different interviewing challenge from
the case described above. Interview subjects are sensitive to
the importance of their advisory, contract, and management
activities, but the professional narratives used to organize and
describe these experiences do not seem to be as well developed.
Hence, the interviewer has a somewhat different role in this
case, often working with the interview subjects
to organize their experience.
The evidential character of oral history
may also be
affected by other factors defining the relations among
interviewers, subjects, and their memory. In the case of the
STHP, many of the interviews covered very recent events, some of
which were nearly contemporaneous with the oral history sessions.
The ability to prepare analytic questions was limited in these
circumstances. Interview subjects were asked to address broad
topical areas with minimal interaction with the interviewer. The
STHP interviews were also distinguished by the fact that they
were, in a sense, anthropological. The project was designed to
document in "real time" the development of the Hubble
telescope as it was planned and built.
The principal investigator was a participant-observer in the
community that created the telescope.
These oral histories should be contrasted with the other
interview sets in the catalog, in which interviews typically
cover events 20 to 50 years in the past. In the latter cases,
the relationship between interviewer and interview subject was
different and the presence of common organizing narratives seemed
more prevalent.
These points are offered as a brief
reflection for the
reader on the evidential status of these oral histories and
on how memory and organizing narratives may interact
with historiography and interview practice. The interviews offer
perceptions of specific facts, personal and social relations,
institutional cultures, ideologies, and other data. Their
utility rests on an assessment (as with written documentation) of
the credibility of the individuals for describing and
interpreting the events of which they were a part, of the
ends, personal or professional, which may have
structured their memories, as well as on the research
perspectives of the interviewers.
CONDUCTING AND PROCESSING INTERVIEWS
As the above notes suggest, the
interview projects were
structured around sets of specific research issues. Questions
for individual interviewees were developed within each project's framework of inquiry
as well as through research into a person's activities and
contributions in the primary and secondary literature.
Interviews were structured to gather responses to particular
events, issues, and topics but were conducted in a flexible
conversational mode to follow interesting leads as they might
arise. Many of the interviews at the beginning provide a
biographical profile of the subject. Interview sessions were
usually arranged at a subject's place of work or home to
facilitate discussion and access to relevant documentation such
as personal research and correspondence files. Multiple
interviews over a period of time were conducted with some
individuals. All interviews were audio-taped and then
transcribed verbatim.
The transcript is considered the primary
document for scholarly use.
Hence, the value of an oral history transcript
depends on a responsible editorial policy as much as on the
proper preparation for and conduct of an interview. In producing
transcripts of the interviews, every effort is made in the
editorial process to maintain original expression and content of
the interview. After transcription, the interviews proceed
through two editorial reviews. The first is by museum staff
(usually the interviewer). The intent is only to verify the
faithfulness of the transcription, to make obvious corrections
and minor editorial chnages in order to increase accuracy and
clarify meaning, and to indicate passages that need amplification
by the interview subject.
After this preliminary editing, the
transcript and a set of
permission forms are sent to the interviewee. This procedural
step gives the individual the opportunity to review and reflect
on statements which will become a permanent historical record of
his of her views or activities. The interview subject is asked
to check the transcript for accuracy, to respond to problem
passages, and to answer questions raised by the interviewer in
editing, and, if desired, to make additions (even lengthy ones)
to the transcript. The interview subject is encouraged to
preserve the spontaneity and candor of the original discussion.
In editing, the individual is asked to keep in mind that the
transcript is a record of a conversation and is not meant as a
polished literary document. After reviewing the transcript, the
interview subject specifies the conditions of access and use for
the interview on the permission form, returns the permission form
and transcript to the musuem.
Upon receipt, the transcript is checked
for coherence and
readability. A table of contents and abstract are prepared, and
footnotes added where needed in the transcript. The interview is
then typed into final form, incorporating the editorial changes
of the internal and external reviews.
ACCESS AND USE RESTRICTIONS
Within the catalog, each interview
begins with a descriptive
heder which indicates its access and use status. Access
and use conditions range from public to permission required for access. Access to and use of oral history interviews is governed by the terms and conditions specified by interview subjects in their
permission forms. Also, a few interviews described in this
catalog have not yet been fully processed and hence are not
available for research. All questions regarding the oral history
collection should be directed to the Archives, National Air and
Space Museum, Washington, D.C., 20560.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank the many staff
members and project
contractors who have contributed to the Oral History Project and
to this catalog. We extend special thanks to two project
volunteers, Sara Woodbury and Cloyd Dake Gull, for their
thoughtful and generous dedication of time, good will, and skill
to the activities of the museum. Finally, this catalog would not
have been possible without the talents and collegiality of Dana
Bell in the NASM Archives. He expertly bridged the
incompatibilities of the numerous softwares the Oral History
Project employed over the years. We could not have compiled this
catalog without his skillful help.
NOTES
1. The principal investigator for the SAOHP
was David H.
Devorkin; for the STHP, Robert W. Smith; for RAND and GWS, Martin
J. Collins; for the interviews on Peenemunde, Michael Neufeld.
Other members of the Department of Space History and external
scholars also have conducted interviews as part of these
projects; their names may be found in the descriptive entries for
each interview. The SAOHP was supported by grants from the
Smithsonian Institution's Scholarly Studies Program and the Naval
Research Laboratory; the STHP was supported by grants from the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National
Science Foundation; the GWS project was supported by individual,
foundation, and corporate grants; and the RAND project was
supported by the Smithsonian Institution's Scholarly Studies
Program.
2. The literature on the social studies of science and
technology is now quite extensive. A useful, brief review of major interpretive
perspectives is Susan Leigh Star, "Introduction: The Sociology of Science and Technology, Social Problems 35 (1988):197-205.
3. For an introductory reflection on
oral history and its relation to current historiography. See Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, "Oral History
and the History of Science: A Review Essay with Speculations," International Journal of Oral History 10 (1989):270-285.
4. Review of recent perspectives on the laboratory is see Jan
Golinski, "The Theory of
Practice and the Practice of Theory: Sociological Approaches in
the History of Science," Isis 81 (1990):492-505. Another important review of literature on the laboratory, including discussion of the laboratory
as a political site, is Timothy Lenoir, "Practice, Reason, Context," Science in Context 2 (1988):3-22.
5. For a summary of the historiographic framework in SAOHP see
"Introduction,"
in Space Astronomy Oral History Project Catalogue
(Washington, D.C.: National Air and Space Museum, 1985).
For a discussion of oral history practice in SAOHP see David
H. DeVorkin, "Interviewing Physicists and Astronomers:
Methods in Oral History," in Physicists Look Back:
Studies in the History of Physics, John Roche, ed. (London:
Adam Hilger, 1990).
6. The themes delineated in the SAOHP have been most recently
analyzed in David H. DeVorkin, Race to the Stratosphere: Manned Scientific Ballooning in
America (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989) and, more
particularly, DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance: How the
Military Created the US Space Sciences After World War II
(New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992).
7. For the history of the Space Telescope and a discussion of
historiographic issues see
Robert W. Smith (with contributions by Paul A. Hanle, Robert
Kargon, and Joseph N. Tatarewicz),
The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, Science, Technology,
and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
and a paperback edition with additional material (Cambridge
University
Press, 1993).
8. For a useful discussion of these points see Elizabeth Tonkin,
Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),
especially chapter 7, and Michael H. Frisch, "The Face on
the Cutting Room Floor: The Place of Practice in Changing
Approaches to Historical Analysis," in Theory, Method,
and Practice in Social and Cultural History, Peter Karsten
and John Modell, eds. (New York: New York University
Press,1992):181-198.
