In the 1950s, the ambitions of America’s fledgling space program caused great fascination among both young and old.
Above is a poster, with the only identifying information I could find given as “Copyright 1959 Educational Posters # 117 “Space Age”. Only one of the vehicles depicted in the artwork was actually built, and really flew. (Can you tell which one? The answer is at the bottom).
Anyone who knows where and how to obtain a high-resolution image of this artwork: please let me know!
In 1963, the same chart was included in a magazine article. (Dickenson, Fred. “U.S. Space Hardware – Today and Tomorrow”. New York Mirror Magazine, April 28, 1963 pp 9-10). Unfortunately, I have no further information.
Answer to the question above: The North American X-15, shown left and center. It was an experimental hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft, which first flew on June 8, 1959 after being dropped from a B-52 bomber at Edwards Air Force Base in California. During the program, the X-15 reached altitudes over 100 kilometers (62 miles), meeting the definition of “space” as acknowledged by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. In terms of speed, the X-15 eventually achieved Mach 6.7 (or 6.7 times the speed of sound). Even today, this is the world record for self-powered, manned aircraft. Unless, of course, we include NASA’s Space Shuttle in this class. (But that would be a stretch. The initial stage of the Space Shuttle’s ascent relied on external boosters, the second phase on an external tank that weighted a lot more than the orbiter. And the shuttle’s descent was unpowered during atmospheric flight – at which point it was just a passive glider. By contrast, once the X-15 was released by the carrier aircraft, it accelerated and flew under its own power and (at least on most flights) used internal fuel. This self-propelled flight phase was when the X-15 reached its record-making altitudes and speeds. On the return trip, the X-15 was also a passive, unpowered glider like its predecessor, the X-1, as well as the much later Space Shuttle.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the first launch of a liquid fueled rocket. In a snowy field near Auburn, Massachusetts, the feat was accomplished by American rocket pioneer Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945).
According to Goddard’s field notes, the contraption nicknamed “Nell” reached an altitude of 41 feet (12.5), during a total flight time of 2.5 seconds. There were only a few witnesses: Goddard’s 25-year old wife Esther (serving as photographer), Goddard’s crew chief Henry Sachs, and Clark University assistant physics professor Percy Roope. Some boys who were out sledding happened to pass by and were mesmerized by the surreal display of an object being launched into the air.
Before the launch of “Nell” on March 16, 1926. Photo (most likely) by Esther Goddard.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that anything but fragments of the historical rocket are still around. Goddard and his compatriots took the parts to their workshop, and most parts were reused.
Goddard was a staunch American patriot. At a time when the military was still very skeptical of any military potential for rockets (or plainly ridiculed the idea), Goddard tirelessly advocated for research and development of rockets for military use. Long before commercial uses for rockets, military funding must have seemed vastly more rational than asking for money to pursue another grandiose idea: that of using rockets to leave the Earth and fly to space. The latter concept had captured Goddard’s imagination since childhood. But aside from a few visionaries, most serious engineers and scientists at the time thought of such ideas as just plain silly, unviable, and ridiculous. (Meanwhile in Europe, Hermann Oberth mirrored Goddard’s ambitions for leaving the Earth’s atmosphere and sending rockets to space).
Robert Goddard lecturing at Clark University
Much of the work Goddard did for the military was rather secretive. And this wasn’t just because of the need to keep weapons development secret, but also because funding rocket research from military budgets would have been controversial, to say the least, even within the military.
It appears to me that Goddard was discretely involved in military research very early on in his career. Re-reading some of Goddard’s biography, I came across an interesting tidbit in the notice announcing his death, published by the New York Times of August 11, 1945.
In the very last paragraph, it casually notes:
During the first World War he was research director for the United States Signal Corps, both at Worcester and at Mount Wilson Observatory in California.
“Worcester” might refer to Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where Goddard enrolled in physics classes in 1904, and eventually became a laboratory assistant and tutor. Goddard remained at WPI until 1908, then began his graduate studies at Clark University in Worcester in the fall of 1909.
While studying at Clark, Goddard continued working in Salisbury Labs at WPI and anecdotally caused a damaging explosion, whereupon his work was moved to the Magnetic Lab. In 1912, Goddard accepted a research fellowship at Princeton University’s Palmer Physical Laboratory.
But this was all before WW-1. Therefore, the reference in the New York Times would either be incorrect, or Goddard had already started working on secret “side projects” on behalf of the military as early as during his graduate studies at Clark, beginning in 1909, or possibly even earlier, at WPI.
So what was he secretly working on?
The project was a man-portable recoilless anti-tank rocket launcher weapon, nicknamed the “stovepipe” or “bazooka”. The development of the bazooka involved the development of two specific lines of technology: the rocket-powered weapon and a “shaped charge” warhead. Goddard was probably commissioned to work on the solid fuel rocket and its launch tube. In other words, the delivery system for the warhead.
Reportedly, Goddard and his co-worker Clarence N. Hickman successfully demonstrated the weapon to the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, on November 6, 1918. But as the Compiègne Armistice was signed only five days later, the project was halted. (It reemerged for the WW-2 effort, at which point Hickman had taken the lead, and Goddard may no longer have been involved at all).
What about the New York Times’ reference to Mount Wilson Observatory? This one is rather intriguing. Obviously, a secluded astronomical observatory on a California mountaintop would seem like a rather unlikely place for rocket research.
Although notes linking Goddard to Mount Wilson can be found in several sources, none of them are original, and I found no definitive evidence. All I was able to locate is a photograph.
In its archive, Clark University has a picture of Robert Goddard “loading 1918 forerunner of “bazooka” of World War II, Mount Wilson, California”, according to Esther Goddard’s annotation. However, since Goddard and Esther weren’t a couple at the time, this image (if it is indeed from 1918) could not have been taken by Esther. Besides, since a woman’s presence at the all-male Mount Wilson Observatory would have created quite a stir in 1918, we can all but rule out Esther as a first hand witness. Most likely, her annotation was made much later, possibly long after her husband’s death in 1945. Therefore, her annotation does nothing to establish a location. The widow merely recorded something she recalled being told about her late husband’s work.
I take the view, pending evidence to the contrary, that this picture wasn’t taken on Mount Wilson, and that Robert Goddard was never really present there. His supposed work at the observatory was probably just a convenient cover story concocted by someone at the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
It is however possible that the cover story was deemed necessary because Goddard may have had some contacts, interviewed for a job, or done some work at Caltech around that time. Caltech is just down the mountain, so there is at least a geographic proximity. Perhaps the Signal Corps wanted to shield Goddard and the bazooka project. Or perhaps Goddard himself wanted to keep a possible visit and connection to Caltech concealed from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clark University, and Princeton University?
As seen in this street scene around Christmas in the early 1950s, the Broadway Hollywood Building (sometimes Broadway Building or Broadway Department Store Building) is situated in the Hollywood Walk of Fame monument area on the southwest corner of the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.
It was originally built as the B. H. Dyas Building in 1927. The Broadway Hollywood Building is referred to by both its main address of 6300 Hollywood Boulevard and its side address of 1645 Vine Street.
The building housed the Broadway Department Store until 1982, after which building was reconfigured for office use. In 2005, after having been vacant for many years, a renovation began to convert the 10-story building into 96 loft condominiums, while adding two floors to the annex.
I wish we still had artists turning out large volumes of thought-provoking and amusing artwork for magazines and newspapers.
This is a cover of Life magazine from 1914, predicting what people would be wearing in 1950. The caption under the illustration reads, “Weren’t they funny?”
Otho Williams McD. Cushing (October 22, 1870 – October 13, 1942) was an American artist, known primarily for his early 20th century illustration and cartoons, for magazines and posters.
I’ll say it: the second half of the 20th Century will go down in history as the time when contemporary architecture went to hell. From the 1960s onward, rarely ever did a newly constructed edifice improve upon what was there before.
The example below shows the southwest corner of the intersection between Grand Avenue and 2nd Street in Downtown Los Angeles, where the old Bunker Hill landmark, the Dome Hotel, once stood at 201 S. Grand Avenue. Built in 1905 as a luxury hotel, the Dome was the embodiment of early century Southern California elegance. (Nathan Marsak has more historical information about the Dome here).
The hotel was later converted to an apartment building. Sadly, there was a fire on July 25, 1964, in which three victims lost their lives, and six more were injured. The reasons for the inferno and its severity have come under suspicion, but foul play could never be proven. By October that year, the ruins had been razed, and no trace of the hotel’s former glory remained.
For the next 44 years, the site was a parking lot. And today, it is home to one ugly broad of a building – the Broad Museum, below.
But since it’s surrounded by other unimaginative, modern structures ranging from bland to hideous, at least some might fight the Ugly Broad stands out as … “interesting”.
