Converted to EAD3 : Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Version 3 : Release: 1.1.1 : Release Date: 2019-12-16. Validating against latest version of schema.
Contact information: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm79010694
Collection material in English
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the LC Catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically.
The archives of the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics were given to Library of Congress by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1964. Additions were received in 1965 and 1966. The archives were organized beginning in 1939 and discontinued in 1962. The records include material donated to the institute's archives by private collectors.
The archives of the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences in the Library of Congress were processed in 1966. Revisions were made to the collection in 1986, after scrapbooks relating to the Wright brothers were microfilmed, and again in 1994. A portion of the collection was rehoused in 2003, but the organization of the material remained unchanged. Although the finding aid and container list were revised to indicate the current housing, the container numbers noted in the microfilm of the Wright brothers scrapbooks reflect the original housing. Containers 64-65 were rehoused and their contents rearranged with more description in 2016.
Prints, drawings, posters, photographs, and other illustrated material pertaining to Bela Clara Landauer in the collection have been transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division where they are identified as part of these papers.
The Smithsonian Institution and Connecticut Historical Society also received segments of the institute's original archives.
The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.).
The archives of the Institute of the Aerospace Science are open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Manuscript Reading Room prior to visiting. Many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use.
Scrapbooks relating to the Wright brothers were filmed by the Library in 1985 and are available on four reels from the Library's Photoduplication Service. Consult a reference librarian in the Manuscript Division concerning availability for purchase or interlibrary loan. Except for some manuscript material within the scrapbooks which was retained, the scrapbooks were discarded after filming. To promote preservation of the originals, researchers are required to consult the microfilm edition.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container or reel number, Institute of the Aerospace Sciences Archives, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics was formed by the merger in 1963 of the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences and the American Rocket Society. The material contained in this collection comes from the aeronautical archives of the former Institute of the Aerospace Sciences. The archives was first formerly organized in 1939 and was discontinued in 1962, by which time it contained one of the most extensive files of aeronautical material in the world. When it was discontinued, the Smithsonian Institution, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Library of Congress received various segments of the collection. The collection is organized in six series: Biographical Files , Aircraft Company Files , Miscellany , Scrapbooks , Material Removed from Scrapbooks after Microfilming , and Oversize .
The material given by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics does not contain records of the institute itself. It represents only aeronautical subject files collected between the years 1939 and 1962. These information files are supplemented by scrapbooks and a small miscellaneous group of papers. The files run the gamut of aeronautical history from the Montgolfiers and the first balloon flight to the development of the modern air force. The collection contains two types of information files, biographical and corporate.
The Biographical Files consist of newspaper clippings, articles, biographical questionnaires, printed matter, and occasional primary material. Among the prominent files are those for Henry Harley Arnold, Thomas S. Baldwin, Louis Blériot, Richard Evelyn Byrd, Clarence D. Chamberlain, Octave Chanute, Glenn Hammond Curtiss, Alexander P. De Seversky, James Harold Doolittle, Amelia Earhart, C. G. Grey, Frank Hawks, Henry Allen Hazen, William S. Henson, Maurice Holland, Howard Hughes (1905-1976), John Jeffries, Charles Edward Kingsford-Smith, Alexander Klemin, Roy Knabenshue, S. P. Langley, Charles A. Lindbergh, T. S. C. Lowe, Johnny Mack, Glenn L. Martin, James V. Martin, William Mitchell, Wiley Post, Eddie Rickenbacker, Alberto Santos-Dumont, T. O. Selfridge, Igor Ivan Sikorsky, A. Leo Stevens, J. T. Trippe, Edward Pearson Warner, Orville Wright, and Wilbur Wright.
Items of unusual interest in the Biographical Files include a reproduction of a Thomas Jefferson letter of 1822 concerning the future prospects of air flight in the United States; letters by Edmond Charles Genet dated January 15, 1826, and May 7, 1827; a manuscript scrap by Walt Whitman concerning aviation written in his hand about 1850; a letter from Victor Hugo sent out of Paris by balloon during the siege of the Paris Commune in 1870; a letter by Theodore Roosevelt to Walter Wellman dated December 9, 1904, concerning a possible flight to the North Pole; a 1917 letter about ballooning from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt to Roy Knabenshue; and the completed application form by Charles Lindbergh for the $25,000 Orteig Prize awarded to the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris.
The records include material donated to the institute's archives by private collectors. Five individual donors account for a majority of the source material in this collection. At least part of the collections of Bella Clara Landauer, T. S. C. Lowe, Hart O. Berg, Charles A. Lindbergh, and Lester D. Gardner are interfiled in the Biographical Files . In most cases it is impossible to assign individual items to specific donations.
An especially interesting file is that of T. S. C. Lowe, the chief aeronaut of the Army of the Potomac, containing his personal papers, 1859-1943, covering a variety of Civil War and late nineteenth-century ballooning. The file contains correspondence with such Civil War figures as Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton, General George Gordon Meade, and the first secretary of the Smithsonian, Joseph Henry. There is a small file of Charles A. Lindbergh papers concerned mainly with the manuscript "Flying Around the North Atlantic" written by his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and published in the National Geographic Magazine in 1934. There is also a file of correspondence between Charles A. Lindbergh and the National Geographic Society for the years 1934-1935. Bella Clara Landauer's contributions to the aeronautical archives are interspersed throughout the Biographical Files and Scrapbooks series. She donated material on such aeronautical figures as Octave Chanute, William S. Henson, Auguste Piccard, and John Stringfellow. The Hart O. Berg collection consists of scrapbooks of newspaper clippings relating to the Wright brothers.
The last major contributor to the archives was Lester D. Gardner. His direct contribution of personal scrapbooks and a collection of aeronautical Christmas cards is small, but Gardner's indirect contributions as executive secretary of the institute form the backbone of the collection. He organized, supervised, and helped arrange the archives, and his organization of the material pervades the entire collection.
The Aircraft Company Files are composed almost entirely of printed matter and newspaper clippings with very little primary documentation. The Scrapbook series includes a variety of aeronautical material. There is a unique collection of aeronautical Christmas cards arranged chronologically from the 1920s to the 1940s. Container 177 has two scrapbooks that contain clippings from the eighteenth century, and a scrapbook labeled "Rare aeronautical manuscript material" in Container OV 75 has clippings and broadsides dating to the year 1804.
The collection is arranged in six series:
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm79010694
Newspaper clippings, printed matter, manuscripts, maps, correspondence, pamphlets, articles, photocopies, sketches, blueprints, questionnaires, reports, memoranda, photographs, speeches, press releases, and negative reproductions.
Arranged alphabetically by name of person and therein by type of material.
Newspaper clippings, pamphlets, airplane specifications, correspondence, printed matter, articles, sketches, maps, blueprints, reports, memoranda, photographs, press releases, financial statements, and annual reports.
Arranged alphabetically by name of company and therein by type of material.
Aeronautical postcards, historical documents concerning the Zeppelin, Glenn Hammond Curtiss ephemera, and Aeronautical Association Prospectus, articles, programs, photocopies, and reports.
Arranged chronologically where possible.
Pamphlets, correspondence, speeches, broadsides, clippings, newspaper clippings, photographs, genealogical records, charts, maps, drawings, programs, memorabilia, biographical sketches, letters of condolence, Christmas cards, cartoons, ticket stubs, reproductions, poems, prints, engravings, press releases, and negative reproductions.
Volumes are arranged by subject matter where possible. Scrapbooks relating to the Wright brothers are available only on Microfilm shelf no. 19,312. Except for some material within the Wright scrapbooks which was retained, the originals of the volumes were discarded after filming.
Oversize scrapbooks and material removed from scrapbooks after microfilming.
Arranged and described according to the series and container from which the items
were removed.
Containers OV 51-OV 64 are listed as Containers 240-253 on the microfilm
edition.