The Legacy of Flight: Images from the Archives of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

The camera is some sixty years older than the airplane, but both came of age together; the one there to witness the other. The Legacy of Flight pays tribute to both, capturing instants, ordinary and momentous, that illuminate the history of flight. Witness men struggling to hold down John Steiner's balloon as he prepares for a wild and stormy flight over (and into) Lake Erie. Watch the Wright brothers testing their glider at Kitty Hawk before turning skeptics into believers as they demonstrate their new invention. Sit on the grass with World War I aircrews awaiting the call to duty. Stand beside the men and women who made the machines in war and peace, loaded and unloaded them, maintained them and flew them too. Meet a young air mail pilot named Charles Lindbergh, wing-walk with barnstormers, and marvel at the streamlined beauty of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra airplane and her Cord Phaeton automobile. Observe Robert Goddard experimenting with the world's first liquid-fuel rocket. Experience World War II with observers perched on London rooftops, with the crews on the decks of aircraft carriers, with the gunners and navigators, with the men and women who risked their lives. Then watch as the war ends and the Enola Gay touches down, back from Hiroshima. As peace returns fly into the wilderness with bush pilots, board a Constellation airliner, go supersonic on the Concorde. Cheer on racer Betty Skelton and break speed and altitude records with the X-men. Accompany astronauts and cosmonauts in their space capsules and space shuttles. Applaud the modern-day record breakers, the latter-day Wrights, Lindberghs, and Earharts who now inspire us. David Romanowski and Melissa Keiser guide us through the history of flight in this amazing selection of photographs expertly culled from one of the world's greatest collections. Here then is The Legacy of Flight, a virtual treasure house of aerial adventure. The camera is some sixty years older than the airplane, but both came of age together; the one there to witness the other. The Legacy of Flight pays tribute to both, capturing instants, ordinary and momentous, that illuminate the history of flight. Witness men struggling to hold down John Steiner's balloon as he prepares for a wild and stormy flight over (and into) Lake Erie. Watch the Wright brothers testing their glider at Kitty Hawk before turning skeptics into believers as they demonstrate their new invention. Sit on the grass with World War I aircrews awaiting the call to duty. Stand beside the men and women who made the machines in war and peace, loaded and unloaded them, maintained them and flew them too. Meet a young air mail pilot named Charles Lindbergh, wing-walk with barnstormers, and marvel at the streamlined beauty of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra airplane and her Cord Phaeton automobile. Observe Robert Goddard experimenting with the world's first liquid-fuel rocket. Experience World War II with observers perched on London rooftops, with the crews on the decks of aircraft carriers, with the gunners and navigators, with the men and women who risked their lives. Then watch as the war ends and the Enola Gay touches down, back from Hiroshima. As peace returns fly into the wilderness with bush pilots, board a Constellation airliner, go supersonic on the Concorde. Cheer on racer Betty Skelton and break speed and altitude records with the X-men. Accompany astronauts and cosmonauts in their space capsules and space shuttles. Applaud the modern-day record breakers, the latter-day Wrights, Lindberghs, and Earharts who now inspire us. David Romanowski and Melissa Keiser guide us through the history of flight in this amazing selection of photographs expertly culled from one of the world's greatest collections. Here then is The Legacy of Flight, a virtual treasure house of aerial adventure.

David Romanowski is a writer-editor in the Exhibits Division of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. He joined the museum in 1987. Romanowski recently wrote the Official Guide to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum published by Smithsonian Institution Press. He has contributed to several other books and worked on countless exhibitions. Melissa A. N. Keiser is the Chief Photo Archivist at National Air and Space Museum Archives Division. She has also photo edited Best of the National Air and Space Museum and contributed to numerous other publications and exhibitions since joining the museum in 1985.