The North Texas State Normal College Album 7

More from the North Texas State Normal College photo album.  The airplane, a true symbol of 20th century modernity makes it's return, along side a one room school house, a true symbol of  19th century rural America.  Click on NTSNC in the labels section to see the whole collection.

Aerial Photography

Yet another poorly made, no name stereo card.  This one commemorating aerial photography in World War 1.  Aviation in what was once called the Great war didn't begin with life and death dogfights.  The first military aviators were spotters, gathering information on troop movements.  They were successful enough that shooting them down became a military necessity.  And so was born the dogfight, the synchronized machine gun and eventually the bombing raid.  I always knew that photography could be dangerous.

Flight

I love this image.  It's from a time when powered flight was still a dangerous and mysterious thing.

Very Cool Sun Glasses

In the beginning there were flight goggles. (See yesterday's post.) When airplanes changed form open cockpits to enclosed flight decks, pilots no longer needed goggles, but they did need sun glasses. The first aviators were made from lenses removed from no longer needed goggles, wrapped in wire. I wonder if this young man is looking for airplanes in the sky.

Aviation

I run across these all the time; collections put together by dealers by theme, but otherwise not related. With my post of the flying family just a couple of clicks back, I thought it would be a good time to put up this aviation themed collection. As usual when purchasing a group like this, I'm drawn to some images more than others, and in some cases, I don't really have an interest in some of the pictures at all. But since I would prefer to err on the side of putting up too much rather than too little, I'm posting them all.

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To be born in 1955 is to be interested in airplanes. World War 2 had only ended a decade earlier and movies of fighter pilots and bombing raids were still an entertainment staple. Jets had come along, but prop planes were still common commercial air carriers. When I was 14 in 1969 man walked on the moon. A 75 year old person in 1969 would have been nine when the Wright Brothers made their first flight at Kitty Hawk, and would have been old enough to have clear memories of the announcement that man had flown a powered craft for the first time. A fast progression of technology. And too, it didn't hurt that my mother was from England and built Minerva engines for Spitfires during the war.

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The long shot of the control tower and terminal with the factory smoke stack to the right is labeled, "11/4/39 Broward Field Hartford, Conn." The two color photos are stamped, "THIS IS A KODACOLOR PRINT MADE BY EASTMAN KODAK EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY T. M. REGIS. U. S. PAT. OFF. Aug 20, 1948." Still flying prop planes out of a small airport. Note the cars parked on the edge of the tarmac. There is a date stamped on the picture of the two girls in the helicopter, MAY 1984" but that has to be when it was printed rather than taken. The hair is all wrong for the 80s. The picture that shows a few small planes lined up on a runway is stamped "AMERICAN PHOTO SERVICE NOV 9 1948." The photographer was clearly drawn to the sky since it's the main part of the composition. Written on the back of the Aviation Mechanics School with it's Army Air Force insignia, "Hanger 1510B we use it for school-we work inside, it's a pretty big place." The TWA wing tip, again a prop passenger plane, "Geneva." I suspect that the group picture wasn't taken at an airport but the plane in the background just barely qualifies it as an aviation themed photo, written in the margin, "Lorasine Schleminns, Bill Donlin, Gabriel Pea, Beth Donlin and Becky-Wash, D.C." The old lady with the leis, "Oct 9, 1950." This may have been her first flight. The group of people standing in front of the control tower, "Our group at the Lourdes, France airport before we left for Paris." And the plane on the grass field, "July 12, 1939 Bendix Airport. U. S. Army Bomber." I'm fascinated that so many of these people dressed up to fly. The last time I flew, I wore jeans and an old, comfortable shirt.

The Flying Family and One Really Creepy Doll

When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies, magazines from Life, and Look to Popular Mechanics predicted that one day the United States would be a country where it would be common for people to own small planes, personal helicopters, and one day the flying car, capable of rolling down the highway and bypassing traffic with the quick flip of a switch that would deploy the wings. Well, I'm still waiting for my flying car. The horizontal format photo with all the people standing in front of a plane is dated "1932." The picture with the "GULF" logo is labeled, "David & Arla, Nogales, AZ 1939." Gulf oil was once one of the largest oil companies in the United States before it was bought out by ARCO. The four adults with the child on the wing, "Shirley, Wesley, Nogales, AZ 1939 Alice, Helen, Emory." Possible it's mislabeled, but there was a time when Shirley, was a far more common man's name than a woman's, so if Shirley is one of the men, the sex balance is restored. The little boy has a toy airplane as would be expected with this flying family. Labeled, "Aug 7, 1937. Robert-3 years. Rafer ranch." Please tell me that the baby carriage picture is a very creepy doll. If not, that's one very weird looking kid. Labeled, "May 1935 Nogales, Ariz." Nothing written on the trio of people, the man in the flying helmet and goggles the old lady and the other man, but stamped on the back, "GUARANTEED FOR LIFE THIS IS A GENUINE BORDER Fox Tone PICTURE. MADE BY FOX COMPANY, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS. COPYRIGHTED 1927 BY CARL P. NEWTON." Nogales is on the U.S./ Mexico border and before the interstate highway was built it would have been one hell of a drive over dirt roads, impassable during the summer monsoon rains. Flying might have been the only real mobility these people knew.

Blackie at the Airport

I've been scrolling through pictures of biplanes, and have found a lot of images that are close, but none that I thought were close enough to write, without doubt, that this plane is whatever. Written on the back, "Blackie at airport."

Hell Divers

Lloyd Adkins, sky writer, hell diver. My guess is that this photo was taken during the 1930's. This young lady is wearing pants, daring in those days. After World War 1, lots of surplus airplanes supplied an air show circuit.