History

National Aviation Day & Orville Wright’s Birthday

History, ,

Today, August 19, is National Aviation Day, observed each year on Orville Wright’s birthday.

Orville and his brother Wilbur are credited with inventing the first airplane to achieve powered, sustained, and controlled flight. All but dropped from the Wright Brothers story, though, is the contribution Katherine Wright, their sister, made to aviation history.

As I reported in a feature I did for National Public Radio in 2003, sadly, it was Orville himself who tried to scrub Katherine from history. Let’s put her back.

Katharine ready to fly with Orville in a Wright Model HS, 1915.

AeroTrain car on exhibit at Dulles International Airport

Exhibits, History, Lounges, ,

Since 1962, one of the unique features of Dulles International Airport (IAD) has been the strange-looking “mobile lounges” used to shuttle passengers between the Main Terminal and other parts of the airport.

Sometime in 2009, passengers will begin traveling between the Main Terminal and the A, B, and C gates via an underground AeroTrain system. (The mobile lounges will continue to be used, for a while, for International arrivals and for reaching the D gates.)

You can read about the new train system here (in the Washington Post) and get a sneak preview of the new cars next time you visit the airport. There’s a full-size AeroTrain car on display in the Main Terminal (baggage claim level, by carousel #3) along with a video showing “the future of passenger travel at Dulles” and an exhibit about the airport’s past.

Mark time at Greater Rochester International Airport

Exhibits, History,

Why do so many airports have so few clocks?

Maybe in the rush to install wine bars, sports bars, and coffee bars, airports have forgotten that a clock is a truly useful amenity for travelers needing to catch a flight.

At New York’s Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC) they’re not taking any chances. The city’s giant, much-loved, and impossible-to-miss Clock of Nations has been restored and installed (post-security) near the food court in the airport’s central observation deck.

This isn’t just any clock: it’s a quirky, somewhat corny, technical wonder: dioramas representing twelve nations (including Germany, Scotland, Canada, Italy, Poland and Puerto Rico) mark the hours. Each hour, the figures light up and the animated dioramas travel around the clock.

Created by sculptor Dale Clark back in 1962, the clock stood for many years in Rochester’s now-closed Midtown Plaza mall. The restored clock will entertain travelers at the airport until 2012 and then move to a children’s hospital in town.

If you’re not passing through the Rochester airport anytime soon, you can see a quick news report about the clock here. Better yet, check out a better view of the vintage post-card above and watch a classic film-clip about the clock on Keith Milford’s Malls of America blog.

Surf’s Up at John Wayne Airport (JWA)

Art, Exhibits, History,

An exhibit about southern California surfing history has rolled into John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Santa Ana, California.

Titled, “California’s Orange Coast: 42 Miles of Tradition and Lore,” and sponsored by the Surfing Heritage Foundation, the exhibit uses maps, artifacts and photographs to explore the role surfing has played in Orange County over the past 100 years.

The exhibit is on display through October 27 across from gates 1 through 4 and 11 through 14 in the airport’s Thomas F. Riley Terminal.

Photo: Items from Newport Beach’s surf community, including a board and trunks from the collection of Randy Hild and Quicksilver. Courtesy John Wayne Airport.

Happy Birthday to the First Lady of Flight

Events, History

Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s most famous aviators, was born on this day in Atchison, Kansas in 1898.

You can learn all about “the Golden Girl of Aviation,” or “Lady Lindy,” and see statues of her in various spots around the country, including the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison and at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California, where Earhart honed her skills before heading out to set and smash records:

In 1928, Earhart – flying as a passenger – was the first woman on a transatlantic flight

In 1932 she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic;

In 1935 Earhart was the first pilot to fly from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland and;

In 1937, sadly and mysteriously, she and navigator Bill Noonan disappeared somewhere in the Pacific during an attempt to fly around the world.

Bonus: Here’s a link to a search that turned up a great photo of Ms. Earhart standing in front of her plane Lockheed Electra at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, back when it was called Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport.

On-line museums of interest to air travelers

Art, Free Stuff, History, Museums

Hooray!

The summer 2008 edition of the MOOM – the Museum of Online Museums – has been posted.

Pretty much everything on the list, from the Virtual Typewriter Museum to the Museum of Corporate Neckties (yes, there are airline ties in there) is pretty special.

But since this is a blog about (mostly…) airports and air travel, let me point out two online museums of special interest: The Stewardess Uniform Collection (746 different uniforms from 330 airlines) and the Online Paper Airplane Museum (800 free designs, plus some books and contests)

(Doll wearing Air France uniform. From the Air France e-shopping site)

Have fun!

Daring man in his flying machine

History

What a thrill it would have been to be at Niagara Falls on this day back in 1911. That’s when 150,000 people watched aviation daredevil Lincoln J Beachey fly his Curtiss pusher biplane over Horseshoe Falls, underneath the steel International Bridge, and down the Niagara River gorge.

It was the first time someone had “pierced the mists of the great cataract and flirted with the deadly currents in the Gorge,” The New York Times wrote. “Thrilling,” declared Beachey, the stuntman Orville Wright called “the greatest aviator of them all,” and who was the first to perform the “loop the loop,” the first to fly upside down, and the first to fly inside a building.

All while dressed in a business suit.

Courtesy: U.S. Air Force Museum Archives

Fear of flying …objects

History, , , ,

Former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart has a message for us:

Duck!

Next Monday (June 30th) is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska Event. On that day in 1908 an asteroid or maybe a comet – nobody really knows what – fell from the sky and devastated about 800 square miles of Siberian forest.

You can see photos and maps of the site and learn more about the ‘event’ here.

Can it happen again? You bet, says Schweickart. “Near-Earth objects have been impacting Earth episodically for the past 4.5 billion years. They don’t hit often, but when they do they are a serious threat to life and property. Ask the dinosaurs… they lost it all.”

Can the earth be saved? Schweickart is working on it. He’s the chair of the B612 Foundation, which plans to change the orbit of an asteroid by 2015 and prove that humankind can protect the Earth from future asteroid impacts.

It may sound like a Twilight Zone episode, but just in case, I’m heading over to Seattle’s Museum of Flight Saturday afternoon (June 28) to find out more. Schweickart will be there to talk about what astronauts, cosmonauts and experts from around the world are doing to make sure we are ready.

And while we’re talking about objects from outer space, earlier this week Dave Demerjian over at Wired’s Autopia wrote about the news that a police helicopter crew from Cardiff, Wales reported being chased recently by a “flying saucer-shaped vehicle.”

Think your plane flight is too long?

History

The folks at AASHTO, the American Assoc. of State Highway and Transportation Officials, remind us that on June 23, 1931, aviation pioneer Wiley Post and navigator Harold Gatty set out on a record-breaking flight. Traveling in Post’s single-engine monoplane, nicknamed Winnie Mae in honor of Post’s daughter, the daring duo left Roosevelt Field in New York and made a 15,474-mile trip around the world. They made 14 stops and ended up back in New York eight days and 16 hours later, setting a world record for air travel.

lockheed_vega_-_winnie_mae.jpg

That record didn’t stand for long, though. In July, 1933 Post made a solo trip around the world in seven days and 19 hours.

Not content with just flying around this world, Post was thinking about supersonic transport and space travel. So in 1934, he designed a “Man from Mars” high-altitude pressure suit and tested it in an unofficial ascent to 49,000 feet.

about_wiley.jpg

Sadly, Post never did get to test his space suit on Mars. He died in an airplane takeoff crash with his friend Will Rogers near Point Barrow, Alaska, on August 15, 1935.