92 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



boulder. The head curator represented the National Air Museum at 

 the ceremony and spoke of progress and plans for better exhibition of 

 the national areonautical collections. 



For the meeting of the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents, 

 on January 13, 1955, there was prepared a special exhibit of an 

 ejection seat used in modern military aircraft. Photographs showing 

 the ejection, release of the seat, and descent by parachute, illustrated 

 the utility of this apparatus. 



This year the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics cele- 

 brated its f oi-tieth anniversary and because the NACA had its genesis 

 in the Smithsonian Institution it was appropriately decided to com- 

 memorate the amiiversary in the Great Hall of the Smithsonian 

 Building. The principal feature of that occasion was the awarding 

 of the Langley gold medal for aerodromics to Dr. Jerome Hunsaker, 

 professor emeritus of aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts 

 Institute of Teclmology and a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 who has been prominent in the development of aircraft and aeronau- 

 tical knowledge for a period even longer than the existence of the 

 NACA. For this occasion the National Air Museum prepared a 

 series of 40 model airplanes, all of the same scale and illustrating 

 successive developments in design from the Wright brothers' airplane 

 to a current naval supersonic delta-winged fighter. These were 

 suspended above the banquet table. 



William B. Stout has been responsible for nimaerous developments 

 in transportation during the past 40 years. One of his many ad- 

 vanced aircraft designs was the Stout Air Pullman of 1924, a high- 

 wing monoplane of all-metal construction. It was the forerunner 

 of the renowned Ford-Stout trimotored transport popularly called the 

 "Tin Goose." Air Pullmans were used for inaugurating Contract Air- 

 mail Route :^1 between Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago in 1926. 

 The Museum has wanted to add a scale model of this type of plane 

 to the series illustrating the development of postal aviation. Thanks 

 to the generosity of the Women's National Aeronautical Association, 

 which encouraged the use of airmail in those critical pioneer days, 

 a model was formally presented on April 16, 1955, at a luncheon at 

 which Mr. Stout was the guest of honor. His description of the 

 difficulties encountered and surmounted in the manufacture and 

 operation of these airplanes was supplemented by stories of flight 

 experiences recalled by Edward G. Hamilton and Lawrence G. Fritz, 

 who piloted the plane on many of its flights with cargo and airmail. 

 The model, 1 : 16 size, was made by Herbert Hartwick. The 

 presentation was made by Mrs. Chester S. Bleyer of the Association. 



The head curator served again this year on the Brewer Trophy 

 Committee, which honors leaders in air-youth education and which 



