Category Archives: Hidden Treasures

Secretary Langley on a Really Good Cup of Coffee

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Langley

Samuel P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Photograph by R. H. Lord

Samuel P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Photograph by R. H. Lord, SI 87-17019.

Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.

As the Museum’s Archives Division packs up and continues with our epic move to the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center, we’re occasionally featuring highlights from our collections. When I was working on a collection of the aeronautical papers of Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906), the third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I was struck by the wealth of detail in his research and the meticulousness of his note-taking. And as a man whose interests ranged from astronomy, astrophysics, aeronautics, and bird flight, mathematics, and the reckoning of standard time, Langley enjoyed observing and describing all sorts of processes — and then suggesting improvements. Take this undated memo in which Langley describes in minute detail the preparation of of a really good cup of coffee at the Posthof café in the spa town of Carlsbad in Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary (now Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic) to his niece Mary:

Dear Mary,

I hope this will interest you.

Affectionately,

Your Uncle Samuel

The best coffee in Carlsbad is at the Posthof, and is as good as I know of anywhere. I have been looking into the kitchen this morning and seeing it prepared. The statement that figs or anything of the kind are employed is legendary. There is absolutely nothing but coffee, and it owes its superior excellence to the freshness and the pains taken in its making.

1. The coffee in the berry.

There are four kinds of coffee bean employed: the Menado, Ceylon, Java and Preanger. I do not know the English equivalents for the first and last. They are of very different sizes indeed, and this difference in size of the berry must make it difficult to burn them equally.

2. Roasting.

The roasting is done in a rotary wire mesh over a slow fire. The coffee is renewed three times daily. Each time 10 to 20 pounds of coffee is roasted, a girl turning the handle, and the process occupying in each case nearly an hour. In spite of this care, when the beans come out some of them are very dark and these are picked out.

3. Grinding.

The coffee is then ground to a very uniform fineness, something between the head of a small pin and a coarse sand. It is in no ways ground into a snuff-like powder, but is always clearly perceptible as particles between the fingers. The color of the ground coffee is a light chestnut.

4. Mixing with water.

Somewhat over one-quarter of a pound of the ground coffee is measured in a tin and this is emptied into a tin pail holding, I suppose, four to six gallons. Into this is poured, actually boiling soft water, enough to make 10 portions of the coffee. This softness is considered so important, that if the water be at all hard, a little soda is first added to soften it. The coffee and water are then well stirred with a spoon, and the lid put on and allowed to remain two minutes, when it is poured onto a thick straining cloth placed in a tin vessel with large holes at the bottom through which it drains into a white stone pitcher, which is itself set in boiling water. From this pitcher it is poured into the little ones in which it is served on the table.

5. Serving.

The amount of coffee and water just described will, as I have said, make 10 portions, each of which will be, with the addition of the milk, two of the little cups here, or hardly one good breakfast cup as we have it at home. It is served ordinarily with milk which has been boiled, and which has a little whipped cream on top.

6. Comment.

The one criticism I can make is that the coffee with the above proportion of water, is served too diluted for a café au lait. It would be better made half as strong again and diluted with a larger proportion of hot milk.

 

(From the Samuel P. Langley Collection (Accession XXXX-0494), box 38, folder 58. Another collection of Langley’s papers is held by the Smithsonian Institution Archives.)

 

Very interesting — who actually uses figs in coffee-making? But if Secretary Langley were still with us today, I think that I would rather not be the barista at his local coffee shop.

 

Allan Janus is  a museum specialist in the Archives Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

 

Packing up Our Secret Decoder Ring

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Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.”

 

Contents of Box

Flat box containing "Aircraft Recognition Training Materials" collection, Accession XXXX-0158.

 

You know when you’re packing up for a move to a new house — boxes everywhere — frantic activity to get everything stored away before the movers arrive,  and you still have to clean out the fridge.  Suddenly you come across an old family treasure — a photo album, your old baseball cards, or maybe your raygun collection — and everything stops while you rummage nostalgically for a few minutes. That’s what’s been going on from time to time in the Museum’s Archives Division offices, as we prepared for our move to the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center this month. We would pause from time to time to appreciate some of our favorite things — our chief photo archivist Melissa Keiser tells the story of one such artifact:

One day I was in the Archives storage box at the Paul E. Garber Restoration and Storage Facility in Silver Hill, Maryland looking for something in the Basil Lee Rowe Collection (NASM Accession XXXX-0019). The large 20 x 24 inch flat box I needed to check was under another big box; when I moved the top box, something inside the flat box slid heavily and went “Clunk!” Fearing some damage might have occurred to the contents, I opened the box to check.

 

The box, labeled Aircraft Recognition Training Materials, NASM Accession XXXX-0158, seemed to be full of a variety of manila envelopes, but on top of everything was this great big colorful circular thing with a World War II vintage P-39 screaming through the clouds — wow!

 

Wheel Chart

World War II Aircraft Identification Wheel Chart (Volvelle), NASM 9A-07661.

 

(It’s a wheel chart, also known as a volvelle, a device with a rich history, still used for pilots’ flight computers like the famous E6B “Whiz Wheel”.)

I’ve seen lots of aircraft recognition training aids in our collections, but they’re usually black and white silhouettes, or sober halftone photographs. This thing was more like a giant cereal box prize or a secret decoder ring! Obviously intended to appeal to a more general audience, I could picture Dad coming home from work one day with this spiffy doodad to share with the kids. Now we can ALL have fun watching the skies for enemy aircraft!

 

Reverse wheel chart

Reverse of Aircraft Identification Wheel Chart, NASM 9A-07662.

 

And on the back, there’s a selection of colorful US Army Air Forces squadron insignias. Melissa passed it around, and we all admired it for a minute or two, and then we got packing once again. Because the moving van is already at the door.

Allan Janus is a museum specialist in the Archives Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Mountain of Arabia

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Joseph Mountain

Joseph D. Mountain. Al Jubayl, Saudi Arabia, May, 1935.Photograph by Max Steineke. SI 92-16169

 

Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month . See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.


In 1934, Joseph Dunlap Mountain, a thirty-two year old former Army Air Service pilot, signed on with the California-Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC, now Saudi Aramco) to serve as a pilot, aerial photographer and mechanic on the company’s 1934-’35 survey expedition to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

 

water holeWater vendor. Al Hofuf, Saudi Arabia, March 19, 1935. Photograph by Joseph D. Mountain. SI 92-16126.

 

The expedition was, of course, looking for oil. In addition to the aerial photographs he took from the expedition’s Fairchild 71 monoplane, Mountain also snapped hundreds of other photographs, making a fascinating document of the desert kingdom at the very edge of the tremendous changes that the petroleum era brought to the Gulf. The images are a fascinating record of traditional Saudi Arabian life, crafts and architecture. Mountain photographed portraits of dancers at Eid al-Fitr celebrations, market scenes in Hofuf and the Old Town of Al Jubayl, camel caravans, Saudi hunters with their hawks, and pearl fishermen and their dhows. Mountain also extensively photographed members of the CASOC expedition – Art Brown, Hugh Burchiel, J. W. (Soak) Hoover, Russell Gerow, Dick Kerr, Schuyler (Krug) Henry and Max Steineke – at work and relaxing with their Saudi co-workers and acquaintances.

 

 

well

Looking down on the well, Fort Dammam. January 5, 1935.Photograph by Joseph D. Mountain. SI 92-15966.

 

Later, Joseph Mountain flew as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. During World War II, he returned to active duty with the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was awarded the Bronze Star while serving in the China-Burma-India Theater and supervising supply missions over “The Hump” – the dangerous air route over the Himalaya Range. After the war, Mountain worked in the nascent computer industry and founded a computer manufacturing company and a data processing firm. Joseph Mountain died on November 25, 1970 at the age of 68, and his family donated his photographs, diaries and flight log books, reports, and maps to the National Air and Space Museum. His Saudi photographs can be viewed online – portraits of an exotic, but not so distant past.

Allan Janus is a museum specialist in the National Air and Space Museum’s Archives Division.

Telstar and the “Global Village”

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Since October 1997, the Space History Division has been celebrating a number of fiftieth anniversaries: Sputnik, Vanguard, Yuri Gagarin’s flight, Alan Shepard’s Mercury Flight. Next July we hope to celebrate another. On July 10th, 1962 at 11:47 GMT, the world’s first transmission of a television image by satellite took place, using the Telstar satellite. Prior to Telstar’s launch that summer, NASA experimented with a passive reflector—“Echo” to transmit signals over the horizon, but engineers soon realized that the most practical way to transmit television, with its high bandwidth requirements, was by an “active satellite”: one that would receive a signal and then retransmit it to a ground station on another continent.  (Most people know the name “Telstar,” if not for the satellite, then for the hit instrumental song by the Tornados, with its “space age” synthesizer sound.)

 

Telstar

An engineering back-up of the Telstar satellite, in the collections of the National Air and Space Museum.

dome

The antenna was located in a remote area of Brittany, the westernmost part of France. It was protected by a flexible Dacron dome, which was transparent to microwave radio frequencies. Photo: Musée des Télécoms, Pleumeur-Bodou, France.

Last week I had the great fortune to visit the French village of Pleumeur-Bodou, on the Brittany coast, where that first transmission was received. The microwave antenna in the US, at Andover, Maine, was dismantled years ago, but the one in Brittany has been preserved and is in excellent condition (although it is no longer used). Because Telstar flew in a low-Earth orbit, it was only visible to the ground stations for a few minutes at a time, unlike today’s geostationary satellites, whose 24-hour orbits position them in the same place in the sky at all times. So the antenna had to track the satellite carefully as it passed overhead. Unlike modern dish-shaped antennas, this one was shaped like a giant horn, based on the design of microwave repeaters built by AT&T for long-distance telephone in the U.S.  Entering the 64-meter (210 foot) diameter protective Dacron dome, and climbing onto the giant horn was an experience I will never forget.

Telstar Antenna

The antenna was not a dish but a horn, mounted on bearings to track the satellite as it passed overhead. The design was adopted by AT&T, which built it, based on existing microwave telephone relay antennas. Photo: Musée des Télécoms, Pleumeur-Bodou, France

It worked. The initial test on July 10 was followed by images of the U.S. flag waving, Mt. Rushmore, and a “live” portion of a press conference held by President Kennedy. The French, in turn, transmitted a tape of Yves Montand singing “La Chansonnette.” After a string of Soviet firsts in space, this was one the U.S. could claim as a first, finally. A modest beginning, but look at what Telstar has brought us. We take it for granted that whenever there is a major event happening anywhere in the world: a Royal wedding, a benefit rock concert, an earthquake—anything—we expect to see it “live.” Marshall McLuhan prophesized that the “cool” medium of television would make us all inhabitants of a “global village.” That did not happen right away, which led people to dismiss his predictions as mere fancy. But with the combination of satellite telecommunications, the Internet, and Facebook (the last two appearing after McLuhan’s death), who would say that he was wrong? And it all began with Telstar.

Paul Ceruzzi is Chair of the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Preserving and Displaying the “Bat-Wing Ship” – August Update

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This post is a follow up to Preserving and Displaying the “Bat-Wing Ship” published on June 24, 2011.

The Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) Conservators and National Air and Space Museum staff spent July and August continuing to investigate the Horten H IX V3 jet fighter for preservation and preparation for display.  Senior Conservator Melvin Wachowiak took the following detailed photographs on Tuesday, June 21, 2011.

Conservators are attempting to determine if the degradation of the plywood is caused by a failure of the adhesive or by biological deterioration of the wood.  Understanding the cause of the deterioration will guide their immediate and long-term preservation strategies.  One of the greatest challenges in this treatment will be in determining the most appropriate adhesive and finding effective methods of getting the adhesive to penetrate into deep areas of delamination. Photos 1 and 2 (seen below)—show 11 sheets of 5 cross-laminated plies each.

 

Horten

Photo 1. Artisans have built airplanes with plywood since well before World War I because crossing each layer, or ply, counters the weakness of a single sheet when bent with the grain rather than across the grain (Melvin Wachowiak /Smithsonian MCI photo).

 

 

Horten

Photo 2. (Melvin Wachowiak /Smithsonian MCI photo).

 

Horten Wing

A robust network of welded steel tubing frames the right outer edge of the H IX V3 center section. Behind the tubing lies a maze of plumbing for one of the Jumo 004 jet engines, the fuel system, and other equipment (Melvin Wachowiak /Smithsonian MCI photo).

 

Horten

German artisans formed the wood around the nose of the H IX center section using steam to make it soft and pliable, and then bending it to shape. Said Melvin Wachowiak , Senior Conservator, Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, "I am still impressed by the bending of the laminated plywood into a conical section without cracks. Nearly 70 years on! The degradation of the broken plys is more like a form of brown rot, but we will have to see what turns up (after further analysis)." (Melvin Wachowiak /Smithsonian MCI photo).

 

Horten

This photograph by Kenneth S. Kik shows the outer wing panels attached to the center section of the H IX V3 now in treatment at the Paul E. Garber Facility. (Photo credit: Mr. Kenneth S. Kik, 1950. Copyright unknown)

 

Russ Lee is a curator in the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum, and Melvin Wachowiak is a Senior Conservator at the National Air and Space Museum.