The Smithsonian: 150 Years of Adventure, Discovery, and Wonder

The Living Museum: 1950-1996

In August 1950, a blunt, orange aircraft resembling a winged bomb dominated the National Air Show at Boston's Logan Airport. Among those on hand for the occasion were Alexander Wetmore, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and General Hoyt Vandenberg, the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff. The craft, officially known as the Bell X- I, was nicknamed Glamorous Glennis for the wife of Air Force Captain Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager. On October 14, 1947, at 43,000 feet above sea level, Captain Yeager had flown the Bell X- 1 700 miles per hour to become the first person to exceed the speed of sound. Now the X-1 would be coming to the Smithsonian.

Less than two years before this air show, on December 17, 1945, Wetmore had attended another ceremony for the acquisition of an even more famous aircraft: the Wright Flyer. After a long separation, the world's first successful airplane had been shipped back from England and placed on exhibit in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building. Now Wetmore was to officially receive the utterly contemporary but equally experimental Bell X- 1. The Institution would house these two very different symbols of aeronautical daring and achievement with some 100 other "heavier-than-air" craft, including the rubber-band-driven model plane designed by Alphonse Penaud; the Vin Fiz, the first plane to cross the North American continent; and the globe-girdling Douglas World Cruiser; as well as various engines, instruments, scale models, and associated aeronautical objects.

The Bell X- 1 was airlifted to Andrews Air Force Base, strapped to a 40-foot flatbed trailer, and driven into Washington in the middle of the night by way of the South Capitol Street Bridge. A wall had been removed from the National Air Museum, a recent addition to the Smithsonian, to provide access for the new arrival, and a crane lifted it onto a pedestal that had been supplied by the Bell Aircraft Corporation. On October 11, 1950, Carl Mitman, Assistant to the Secretary for the National Air Museum and a long-time student of technology, wrote to General Vandenberg, proudly acknowledging receipt of the "supersonic rocket airplane."

The Air Museum's curator, Paul E. Garber, a devotee of all things aeronautical, including kites, wrote to the U.S. Air Force after the museum had reopened to say that "the public is greatly interested in this ...plane." In fact, Glamorous Glennis was a bellwether: As General Vandenberg had said of it in his airshow presentation, the aircraft "marked the end of the first great period of the air age, and the beginning of the second. In a few moments the subsonic period became history, and the supersonic period was born."

In relative terms, the Smithsonian Institution was to undergo a similar transition.

Topics

[Bullet] Stirring
[Bullet] A Wind in the Attic
[Bullet] Noon Over the Mall
[Bullet] Continuum

Explore the Smithsonian Buildings of the Era...

[Bullet]The National Museum of American History (1960)
[Bullet]The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1970)
[Bullet]The National Air and Space Museum (1975)
[Bullet]The S. Dillon Ripley Center (1985)

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