♪ on july 1st, 1976, the smith soewn smithsonian air and space museum opened. today marks the 40th anniversary and live coverage starts at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. we'll tour the museum and see one of a kind artifacts, including the spirit of st. louis and lunar module. we'll talk with its director, general j.r. jack daily and jeremy kenny and valerie neil of

the space history department. you can join the conversation, they'll take your phone calls and e-mails and tweets. the 40th anniversary of the smithsonian air and space museum, live in evening beginning at 6:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv. >> each week american history tv's american artifacts takes viewers behind the scenes, we visited the national portrait gally comment rating the amelia earhart disappearance, she was called lady lindy and the mystery surrounding her loss continues to fascinate americans today. >> welcome to the national portrait gallery. i'm the curator of photographs here at the gallery. when visitors come to the portrait gallery and showing them around the exhibition, i often ask them, what do you know

about amelia earhart? we know she was the first woman to fly across the atlantic and we also know that she disappeared tragically in 1937. that's what most visitors understand about amelia earhart. what this exhibition hopes to do is to reveal more of the complexity of her life. to go into a little greater detail, to understand that she was a pioneer for women at this particular time. and that also she was one of the most photographed american women in the first half of the 20th century. what did it mean to be photographed as often as she was? what did it mean for a woman to be in the public eye? this is an question that interest me in this exhibition? >> let me share with you some of my favorite photographs. this photograph, very small

photograph, shows amelia with her first flight instructor, a woman named, netta snook. it's a photograph taken in southern california where amelia earhart was living in 1921. let me step back a second and comment that amelia -- there's a certain rootlessness to her life. that begins as a young child. she was born in atchinson kansas, her father was a railroad clerk. but they had a great deal of difficulty holding a job. with the outbreak of world war i she is moved to volunteer to be a nurse and works in a hospital in toronto tending to the wounded. during the 19 teens her parents separate. they had had a difficult

marriage. in 1920, they come back together and relocate the family to southern california. amelia decides to drop out of medical school after a year and to join her parents in southern california. and it's there that amelia gets the first bug to fly. southern california was the center of aviation industry at this time period. on weekends there were aerial races and stunt competitions that amelia loved to attend. it was after observing some of these pilots that she decided she wanted to become a pilot herself. yet, was interesting, she decides to search out the only female flight instructor at the time period. one of the things that amelia is most famous for, being the first woman to cross the atlantic in

an airplane. this photograph right here brings together a number of the important participants in that particular story. amelia as you see here in the center with the roses in her flight cap, this is a photograph taken in south hampton england upon her arrival in england from the successful crossing. in 1928, amelia received an invitation out of the blue to come down to new york to meet a man named george putnam, who was a publicist working for a woman named amy guest. she was a very wealthy american socialite who had the strong desire to be the first woman to fly across the atlantic, inspired by charles lind berg's flight a year earlier, she went out and bought an airplane and set upon this goal of being the

first woman to cross the atlantic. it's important to recognize that flying was a very difficult and ar duous activity during this time period. it was also really risky one. guest's family ultimately convinced her this was probably not the right thing for her to do. she was a passenger and sat in the back seat and while she did some navigation, the two other gentlemen you see here, they were the pilots hired by mrs. guest.

amelia acknowledged this fact. he had sa she said at one point i was a sack of potatoes in the back seat. by the time they land, and as you see in these photographs here and here it is amelia that is the center of attention for being the first woman to cross the atlantic. and here she is, again, the center of attention with her two co-pilots. she never -- she never -- she always acknowledged that she was a sort of passenger on this. but it graded on her that somehow she had fooled the american public into thinking that she was actually flying. and i think that that ate at her until 1932 when she decides she wants to go it alone. this photograph is entitled a big smile, please, and it shows

amelia with stoltz and gordon, lined up for a group of photographers and reporters who have come to cover this historic transatlantic flight. overnight, amelia is going to be this media sensation. there are going to be hundreds, thousands of photographers who want her picture who want interviews with her. this was a lot to take for a young woman who had been working in a settlement house at the time. and it was something that she would have to get sort of adjusted to, this new found fame. flying was not a poor man's sport in the 1920s. if amelia wanted to continue her work as a pilot, she realized that she needed the resources to do so. and with the help of george putnam, a very entrepreneurial publicist, any number of opportunities begin for amelia following this 1928 flight.

she endorses various products, including controversially cigarettes. she goes on the lecture circuit and in some years gave upward of 150 different lectures in one particular year. and as we see in this particular photograph, she also began to design her own clothing line, type of luggage known as aimmel earhart luggage. george putnam came from a famous publishing company family from new york. gp putnam and sons. and another thing that george set up for amelia was an opportunity to write a book about her experience. 20 hours, 40 minutes by amelia earhart came out literally two months after her famous flight. the manuscript was all ready to go, and she penned a final chapter upon her return to

america, and immediately they were able to publish this to kind of capitalize on all of the media attention. putnam also set up a guest editorship at cosmopolitan magazine and so in this case we see one of the magazines in which she published an article about flying. and about the future of airline transportation. and women's role in that. although amelia and george putnam were looking to capitalize on this historic flight, amelia also recognized that there was an opportunity to use her fame as a platform for encouraging and advancing women in aviation and not only aviation, but giving women the

encouragement to pursue independent lives outside the home. and so these articles, these books become opportunities to talk about what women were doing in these particular lines, these professions. and to argue for the increased opportunities for women in these fields. what is interesting is that amelia, i think, won the hearts of so many americans, and that they were cheering for her to accomplish the extraordinary aviation feats that she was setting out to do. this particular cartoon which is titled women's work is never done and shows amelia's plane streaking across the sky with mere man in the foreground,

suggests that there was a great deal of support for her, both personally, and i think for creating an opportunity for women more generally. this particular cartoon is from the collection of the library of congress. and i remember seeing it in the reading room there, and thinking this would be the perfect thing to reinforce the idea that she was kind of beloved figure in this period of the 1930s. george putnam was married at the time when she -- he first met amelia. but not long after the 1928 flight, he separates from his wife. and begins to court amelia quite aggressively. in fact, he proposed to her on six different occasions before amelia finally and somewhat

reluctantly accepted. the picture here shows them on their wedding day, and this letter down here, really a remarkable letter that was sent by amelia to george on the day before their nuptials. let me just read the -- one of the lines here. it speaks to her tentative heart at this particular moment. she writes towards theletter, il promise, that is that you'll let me go in a year if we find no happiness together. this idea that she was not going to give up her flying in order to be a stay at home wife, that this was a new type of partnership in which they could both pursue their dreams and that marriage was not going to

compromise her desire to be a leader in the aviation industry. because amelia was in the newspapers and the magazines so often, she was such a center of national attention, there was not infrequently controversy surrounding her. and in fact, one of the things that i think troubled the american audience was the fact that she was being taken advantage of, exploited by george putnam for his own gain. and i think that that frustrated amelia, because she saw herself as wanting to get out there, and achieve things in the field of aviation, achieve things for women. and these cries tended to sort of grate on her. i really love this photograph, it shows amelia in the cockpit

of an auto gyro, a plane that has a propeller on the top and in front. important to recognize there was all sorts of experimentation happening in terms of aviation design. and though we know amelia for the long distance flights that she took across the atlantic, it is also, i think, important to recognize that she was a test pilot and that she was very fascinated in new advancements in aviation. and this was one of the planes that she actually flew by invitation of the designer of the plane. she actually set an altitude record in this plane and became the first american to fly this plane across the united states. as i mentioned earlier, amelia was a passenger on the 1928

flight. and it always grated on her that she didn't take the controls. and so in 1932 she decides to try to fly across the atlantic again. but this time by herself. and she acquires a new plane, a lockheed vega aircraft that if you go to the national air and space museum today, on the second floor you'll see that wonderful plane and she decides on the fifth anniversary of lindbergh's famous solo flight across the atlantic to attempt this herself. she takes off from newfoundland, and her goal is to get to paris, france, in the sense, to replicate lindbergh's flight. immediately upon takeoff, she hits bad weather. and toward the end of the flight, she is going to have a shortage of fuel, and is going to be very concerned about

whether she's going to have to ditch the plane in the atlantic. but fortunately she comes out of the clouds, and spots ireland, and the photograph that i'm standing next to here shows amelia with the farmer in whose field she landed in 1932. he was the only person to witness her landing and there is a funny conversation that happened between the two. she jumped out of her plane. he came up to greet her. and he was quite shocked. who is this person? what is this plane? where did you come from? and he asked her this very question and she says, i'm amelia earhart from america. flying in the 1930s was different than flying today. you don't have pressurized compartments. you don't have beverage service or a place to go to the

bathroom. it was grueling, grueling experience. and this case, gives us some indication of the arduous nature of this work. we see on the right here her pilot's license, really romantic picture, for sure, that sort of suggests her connection to the sort of aviation fraternity. but these two artifacts here are from the famous 1932 flight. her leather cap that she wore, remember it was quite cold in the compartment. and also this little green vial she carried with her. these are smelling salts. remember, this is a flight that lasted 15 hours. and flying by herself she did everything possible to try to sort of stay attentive, to stay

awake and this little vial she brought with her. otherwise, the plane was largely filled with fuel, she said she brought a can of hot soup, she brought toothpaste, she brought $20, but she didn't even bring a change of clothes and when she ultimately lands in ireland and moves on to england and to other capitals in europe, she's going to have to first borrow clothes and then acquire new set of clothes in order to make her public appearances. one of the wonderful discoveries that i made in the course of the research for the exhibition was at the library of congress where i found this extraordinary palm print of -- taken in 1933, a year after the famous transatlantic flight. this is amelia earhart's palm. people commented on how long her

fingers are. but it is in part of the collection at the library of congress of papers and palm prints by a famous american palmist, who would reveal all sorts of insights into the character of the person whose palm this is. and so let me just read an excerpt from her report on amelia's palm. it suggested that the length of the palm indicates the love of physical activity. but the restraining influence shown by the length of the fingers indicative of carefulness in detail enables her to make careful preparation toward accomplishing a definite goal. let me take you over to two of my favorite photographs in the exhibition, that are right here. this first charming photograph of amelia and eleanor roosevelt, you can just see in the picture the friendship that they shared,

how much they really enjoyed each other's company. important to recognize that in may of 1932, herbert hoover was the president of the united states. and we are in the midst of the great depression. fdr is elected in the fall of 1932. and right away eleanor roosevelt understands that amelia is somebody that she was interested in getting to know. and so one of the very first guests to the white house after fdr's election will be amelia earhart. and earhart's return to the white house on numerous occasions and to tell her story of the flights that she had made and the importance of the government sponsor, research, into aviation. in fact, eleanor became so

enamored of amelia that she asked her husband whether she could get her pilots license. but franklin said no, that wouldn't be appropriate for the first lady to have her pilots license. that said, amelia took eleanor up in the plane, in her plane on a couple of occasions. in 1934, the president of purdue university was in the audience at a lecture that amelia gave. and was so taken by her story that after the lecture, he came forward and introduced himself and invited amelia to come out to west lafayette, indiana, home of purdue university to perhaps speak to the students and to investigate the possibility of setting up a women in aviation,

women in engineering curriculum at purdue. and so she accepted the invitation. and she becomes a visiting professor at purdue and this shows her atop the lockheed electra that she would fly around the world in 1937, with the first class of female aviation students under her tutelage. what is interesting also is that in exchange for amelia's work at purdue, president elliott at purdue will devote the funds to help construct a state of the art aircraft that flies faster, longer distances, he described it as a flying laboratory, but for amelia, this was a plane that she saw she could use to fly around the world.

as we move around to this wall, we see a number of photographs connected to her famous 1937 flight. here's amelia in the engine casing for the lockheed electra under construction in southern california at the time. she supervised very closely this. as we move to this photograph, we see her in the cockpit of the lockheed electra, which is ready to go, early in 1937, and the idea initially is to travel in a westward direction. and so she leaves in 1937, from oakland, california, flying west to hawaii. the idea being that she wants to complete the longest and most difficult part of the flight first. she lands safely in hawaii. and on the next day gets up to continue the flight across the pacific, when all of a sudden

she is forced to abort the takeoff, the plane crashes, and while she is not injured, the plane is not flyable. it needs to be shipped back to california, where repairs are made and ultimately in the intervening months she and george putnam rethink the trip. and instead of going in a west direction, she decides instead to fly in an east direction, and to take off from miami, florida. so it is there in early june 1937 that she and her co-pilot fred noonan, who san expert navigator, who was brought along specifically to assist amelia with navigation, they take off from miami. they fly south initially to south america. as they make the leap across the atlantic, from south america to

africa. from africa to the middle east. the middle east to india. india to the south pacific. and it is really in july, early july 1937 she finds herself on the island of new guinea, 30 days out on the flight, 22 days of actual flying in the air, quite fatigued, a little bit anxious because now the hardest part of the trip was in front of her. in particular, she had to fly from new guinea to this small spit of land, howland island, a veritable needle in the pacific haystack that she had to find. she had noonan there to assist her in finding howland island. she also had the u.s. coast guard who was going to direct the plane into howland island

where it would be refueled. but the communication between the coast guard ships on sea and the plane was disrupted. and that this extraordinary long trip, they ended up getting lost, they reason out of fuel, and ultimately was forced to ditch the plane. i think it is safe to say that she landed in the ocean, and was -- and that the plane sunk. one of the great mysteries in 20th century u.s. history is what happened to amelia earhart? and since her disappearance 75 years ago, 1937, there have been repeated efforts to try to locate amelia earhart and her co-pilot fred noonan and to recover the lockheed electra aircraft.

these efforts continue to this day. there have been very serious efforts and interesting, intriguing new evidence about what might have happened to her. in the days after the plane disappeared, the u.s. navy coast guard spent 16 days scanning out all over the south pacific, checking out various small islands, searching the seas, looking for any evidence of the downed aircraft. after that rescue attempt was called off, george putnam privately financed a trip that lasted another three months, into the fall. sadly no evidence was ever uncovered at that time that revealed where she was. of course, there are any number of myths that grew up in the popular press at the time. i mean, amelia was such a beloved figure.

this was a real national tragedy. in the midst of the great depression, she represented hope and progress and the sort of -- she represented the future. and for her to be lost was very disconcerting. there are some that blame the japanese, that she was somehow captured by the japanese in the -- as we now know it the leadup to world war ii. others, you know, thought she might have survived. i'm standing in front of a painting of her from 1933. painting by an artist named howard chandler christie, one of the most sort of beloved american artists of the 1920s and '30s. very winning portrait. you can feel the sort of movement through the picture, the breeze that blows her scarf as she sits on this rock, either

in the sky, up above, either a mountain or the sea, it is hard to tell. and she's got this extraordinary kind of winning smile on her face. her second book that she published was entitled the fun of it. where she describes flying as something that she really loved to do. what i came to learn in put ing this exhibition together was how passionate she was for flying. the plane was her home. when you see her with the biggest smile on her face, and many of these pictures, it is oftentimes in the cockpit of a plane. her image continues to resonate to this day. she's an icon that is oftentimes used in advertisements from apple computers, think different, to other advertising campaigns.