84 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



on helicopter development, and the Air Transport Association was 

 given facts about the P. R. T. Airline of 1926 and the Washington 

 Hoover Airport for a chronological treatise. The Air Force Associa- 

 tion was provided with maps, photographs, and texts pertaining to the 

 first transcontinental flight, made in a Wright brothers' airplane and 

 requiring 84 days and 70 landings, in 1911. This association plans to 

 erect a marker at Pasadena, Calif., in memory of the pilot Calbraith 

 Perry Rodgers. 



The results of Museum assistance to artists have been apparent in au- 

 thentic aircraft paintings and drawings for Life, Aero Digest, and the 

 Saturday Evening Post, while other magazines and publishers aided 

 by Museum material and information during this year include the Na- 

 tional Geographic Society for its December aviation issue, the Book 

 of Knowledge, Collier's Encyclopedia, and the World Book, which 

 were supplied with aeronautical photographs. A pictorial history of 

 aeronautics, "Flight," compiled by the publishers of Year includes 

 many views selected at the Museum. Among the universities that re- 

 quested assistance from the Museum are the Catholic University in 

 Washington, D. C, and the State universities of Illinois, Colorado, Ne- 

 braska, and Maryland. Several museums were helped with current 

 projects. The Dayton Art Institute was furnished with illustrations 

 of old Chinese kites for an exliibit on early ideas on flight; the Kern 

 County Museum of California was supplied with a selection of air- 

 history photographs; the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, 

 which is trying to repair the ravages of war among its aircraft ma- 

 terial, was sent drawings of a Wright brothers' Type A Flyer; and the 

 Musee de I'Air in France was furnished information about the Japa- 

 nese Kamikaze rocket-bomb aircraft in the National Air Museum. 



With the continuation of celebrations by the air fraternity, directed 

 by the national and local committees associated with the Fiftieth 

 Anniversary of Powered Flight, which culminated with the close of 

 the calendar year 1953, the Museum experienced the greatest demands 

 yet made upon its informational services. 



Requests to the Museum for lectures on widely varied aeronautical 

 subjects were particularly frequent during the anniversary year and 

 continued into the remainder of the fiscal year. Among the 23 lec- 

 tures given by the head curator in the 12-month period were those to 

 the Pan American World Airways Management Group at Miami, Fla., 

 October 13; to the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, D. C, 

 October 20 ; to the large group celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of 

 Powered Flight at Ithaca, N. Y., December 8 ; before the National Air- 

 port Club, Alexandria, Va., January 7 (which resulted in that club's 

 adopting a motion to cooperate with the Museum in its need for an ade- 

 quate building for the aircraft collection) ; on January 27, at Sampson 

 Air Force Base, New York, to a double assembly of about 5,000 student 



