This project will create an archive on the history of southern California aerospace. For the last hundred years Southern California has provided the primary home for the U.S. aerospace industry. Although this geographic concentration had important consequences for both aerospace and Southern California, no systematic archive on the subject currently exists, and much important historical material has been lost. The project will preserve documentary collections and oral histories in an aerospace archive at the Huntington Library.
Southern California aerospace illuminates crucial issues in science and technology studies and in American history. It was a major sector of the U.S. economy in the last century and employed a substantial fraction of American scientists and engineers. Its history highlights disciplinary differences between science and engineering and between design and production engineering, and institutional relationships among universities, government labs, and industrial corporations. Aerospace overlaid on these relations the differences between civilian and military sectors, especially the issue of classification. Finally, the industry's concentration in Southern California underscores the effects of place in science and engineering: how technologies can reflect the particular geographical context that produces them, and in turn how the production of such technologies influences the broader context. The history of Southern California aerospace thus combines history of science and technology with scholarly interests including labor, industrial policy, gender and ethnicity, art and literature, popular culture, and the environment.
This project will provide vital and lasting infrastructure for research, teaching, and outreach. The aerospace archive capitalizes on the institutional collaboration of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, combining the curatorial and scholarly resources of the Huntington Library and the University of Southern California. The project includes strong outreach to science writers and science museums, and it supports an ongoing "Teaching American History" program for K-12 education at the Huntington Library. A project website will help disseminate the archive's products. The project will thus provide a sorely needed entry point for research into this vital aspect of American history.
Southern California as we know it would not exist without aerospace. Over the twentieth century millions of people flooded Southern California for aerospace jobs, transforming the region from a collection of sleepy agricultural groves to a sprawling high-tech nexus on the Pacific Rim. Southern Californians learned to live with sonic booms, security clearances, test-rocket firings that flashed and echoed in the foothills, and an economy tied to the vagaries of defense spending. In doing so, they helped provide one of the defining symbols of modern technological culture in the twentieth century. Southern California aerospace helped the U.S. win World War II and the Cold War, from propeller-driven airplanes to strategic missiles, spy satellites, and stealth aircraft. Its commercial aircraft and communications satellites have connected continents and impelled globalization. And Southern California’s central contributions to the civil space program, including the moon landing and the exploration of the solar system, challenged the human imagination. Aerospace is central to American and world history in the 20th and 21st centuries. This NSF-funded project is documenting this history in a collaboration between USC and the Huntington Library, under the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. The project is collecting the papers and oral histories of key individuals and institutions across the aerospace industry in an archive at the Huntington Library. Fifteen archival collections have already been acquired, including the papers of Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, founder of Lockheed’s Skunk Works; Ben Rich, Johnson’s successor as Skunk Works director; Willis Hawkins, first president of Lockheed Missiles and Space; Albert Hibbs, an architect of the early space program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a polymathic science popularizer; Jack Real, longtime designer and close confidant of Howard Hughes; Thomas V. Jones, CEO of Northrop from 1960 to 1989; Albert D. Wheelon, a crucial early planner of the U.S. reconnaissance satellite program and later head of Hughes; and a substantial collection of historical files from the Northrop Grumman Corporation. The Hawkins and Christen collections include several thousand photos spanning six decades of American aviation. In addition, fifty-five oral history interviews have been completed and many more are planned. Subjects include CEOs, design engineers, test pilots, and production engineers across the industry spectrum, from large aircraft firms to small but crucial suppliers. These interviews are being transcribed, edited, and cataloged at the Huntington Library. In fall 2010, some 25,000 people visited the exhibition, "Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California," at the Huntington, featuring documents and photos from the aerospace archive. A collection of essays was published in Peter Westwick, ed., Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California (Huntington Library Press/University of California Press, 2012). The Los Angeles Public Library named Blue Sky Metropolis to its list of Best Nonfiction of 2012. Despite the clear importance of Southern California aerospace to U.S. history and history of science and technology over the last century, much of its history has yet to be explored. A key reason is the lack of accessible archives. No systematic archive on the subject currently exists, and much important historical material has been lost. This project is preserving a vital aspect of the American past.
