us. but this one we have on display is configured identically to the one that went with "apollo" 11. we have other artifacts associated with lems but everything we have on this is installed, in fact, this is the most complete display we've ever had on this particular artifact. it's been on display for 40 years but now an individual who was actually involved with the original configuration of the lem 4 came in and did the work on this so it's -- we're very pleased with this exhibit and its authenticity. >> if you could look ahead 40 years tonight, what will this facility look like? >> i tell you one thing, it will look better than it does today because it will have all new stone and exhibits and they would now be getting long in the tooth and we'd be looking for more noun redo the whole place. >> general jack dailey, thank

you so much for being with us. the individual who runs this facility, the most popular museum in the smithsonian. >> can i put in a plug? >> absolutely. >> at 8:30 tonight we're going to have an opening ceremony for our new exhibit, the boeing milestones of flight hall and it's where where we are now open to the public and we'll stay open all night so if you haven't got anything else to do, even if you do, come down, the weather is clearing here, we're going to do it outside and have a grand time. >> and i'll put a plug for c-span 3 american history tv because we're carrying it live. thanks for being with us. we'll show you around this terrific facility, this museum and some of the artifacts, one-of-a-kind items only here at the air and space museum. behind me you see the wright flier, the world's first airplane. on the morning of december 17, 1903 at 10:35 a.m. orville

wright at the controls takes flight in 120 feet. that's the first time a man has entered the air in a fly magazine. at the end of four flights where orville and wilbur at night, wilbur at the controls 852 feet, 30 miles per hour at an altitude of 30 feet and they usher in the aerial age. the age of aviation. and how they came to create that moment is very important because not only do the wright brothers invent the airplane, but they invent arri aeronaut cal engine. so in 1899, wilbur the older, orville the younger, they are unmarried, they own a bicycle shop, they are yankee mechanics, they know tools and they know mechanical devices and they take that interest and apply it to printing presses, to bicycles and to solving the problem of

building a fly magazine. so in 1899 they write the smithsonian institution and they ask for all the literature on flight and they learn about these predecessors like george kaley, the father of aerial navigation. samuel langley, who will be the secretary of the smithsonian and a competitor. they learn about octave chanute, the continue watt of the knowledge between the arrow nautical experimenters of europe and the united states. but what sets the wright brothers apart is they break the problem down. they look at the airplane as a system of systems, looking at propulsion, structures, control and aerodynamics, the sign of flight. and so between 1899 and 1902 they start flying gliders. they start with kites, they have gliders and by 1902 they have a controllable glider in which they've made this new fundamental contribution called wing warping. rather than using your weight to

shift the balance of the glider they have a mechanical system where they can twist the wings how they come to that conclusion is the brothers always complemented each other as intellectuals so they argued how will we control this airplane? how will we make it move in the air? how can we keep it from just flying in a straight line and one day in the bicycle shop wilbur is talking to a customer and he has an inner tube box for a bicycle tire and he's twisting it as he's talking to this individual and he sees in his mind's eye -- and the wright brothers are all about non-verbal thinking, the mind's eye, envisioning what the three dimensional technology is and he says if we start twisting the wings of our glider we can control it, lift one wing up, the other goes down, it will turn. so that's how they come up with the new ideas. they create the world's first working wind tunnel to do the math of previous experimenters

and they find out that john sheeten is wrong with the co-efficient of the lift of the wings and they reapply it to their work so they design wings capable of creating lift. so by 1902 they have a working glider where they're flying for up to almost 30 seconds from the dunes of kittyhawk, north carolina, the kill devil hills in which they've traveled there because it's the one spot in america that has con thys sent winds as well as isolation where they can work in peace without distraction. so through 1902 and 1903 they tad last big part of the airplane. so they've done the wings, the aerodynamics, they've done the structure which was invented by octave that newt, then you look at the control system, ring warping. so the last ingredient is the propulsion system and they acknowledge it will be reciprocating piston engine so

orville and charlie taylor, the mechanic in the bike shop, create a horizon force on their 12 horsepower engine and they know they need that much power to generate the trust of the propellers. and that's another very specific choice the wright brothers make is it's going to have propellers on the new flying machine. so how do propellers work? they figure they can go to existing data on ship propellers and that doesn't give them any answers. so the same sort of intellectual give and take the brothers are nashing at each other, they're really going at it and they realize that a propeller is a rotating wing in a he lick cal path. so they take their wind tunnel data, adapt it to the designing of a propeller and they design two propellers capable of producing up to 67 to 70% thrust of that 12 horsepower engine. you see the two propellers on the back of the wings called pusher configurations and they wanted the propellers to turn in opposite directions, so

counterrotating. and so taking their knowledge of working in a workshop and what you want to change the direction of a machine you twist the belt from the power system going from the roof. you can see one of the chains twisted on the drive system of the flier, what they called hour flier. so that propulsion system enables to brothers to go to kittyhawk in the late fall early winter of 1903 where they start readying their flying program. they have a crash. they're down for a couple of days but it's december 17, 1903 they they fly this airplane that you see behind me. it's that moment, that reaching of that actual getting into the air under the power and looking at all the technology here in terms of you have your aluminum engine, spruce propellers and spruce structural member, you have metal fittings and you have muslin fabric, pride of the

west, that's the brand. so that comes together in the system of the airplane that they create. and so after those four flights a big wind comes up at kittyhawk and the flier tumbles. >> it's demolished but they claim success, pack it up and go back to dayton where they're from and they send a telegram to their father "success for flights." that make the announcement. that's the quiet way of saying the aerial age has emerged. by 1905, an improved flier, wilbur and/orville are flying up to half an hour for long distances and figure eights over huffman prairie just outside of dayton, ohio. so the '03 flier, as it's going to be called, is forgotten and it sits in crates, it goes through a flood and where all the crates have been soaked with water and mud and then orville is starting to reassemble the

airplane and put it on different displays through the in t1920s in 1926 it goes to england and during world war ii it's stored west of london. during the blitz, during the attacks on england. but it comes to 1948 when orville with great fanfare donates the wright flyer to the smithsonian institution and it's been on public display, whether it's at the old arts and industries building and the classic tin shed that existed for many years and where the opening of the national air and space museum in 1976 the wright flier went on display and in 2003 and the centennial of the wright brothers first flight this gallery was opened to tell that story of the making of the first airplane and with it aeronaut cal engineering. what you see is the original plane, the wright flier but it's been restored and things have

been changed. the fabric you see there is not the original fabric from 1903. but it's been applied in the same sewing methods and construction as the 19300-3 airplane. so orville removed the fabric to make the airplane look better when it went to england but in the 1980s this airplane underwent a restoration. so the structural members, the engine, is one of the propellers, that's all original. over in the corner of the gallery is one of the original propellers you'll see because when the airplane took its tumble it cracked and split and broke that propeller. we've just left the wright brothers and the invention of the air gallery and now we're in legend memory, the great world war i gallery and the airplane behind sennd me is a pad is 13. this is what the configuration of the french and the rest of the aeronaut cal community

creates in 1903 and make it their own. this is a 1917 design. it's the highest performance french fighter of world war i and what that means is that it can go 130 miles per hour. so 100 miles an hour faster than a wright flier but it's just a strut-and-wire braced airplane but it's now in what would be called the tractor configuration, with the engine and propeller in the front, a central fuselage and take note of that french word, fuselage, with two biplane wings and empennage, the vertical and horizontal stabilizer and ailerons for control at the top. so more french influence. so after the creation of the airplane, the wright brothers bring it to the world, there's french and other european experimenters flying airplanes but the french run with it and they take a lead as well as

other nations but in looking at this airplane, it's the epitome of the strut-and-wire brace configuration but it's been improved, enhanced. now a pad is 13 is designed by louis bangladesh roe. he's designed the spad 7 which is very important in terms of air combat in france and the western front during world war i but it's the spad 13 that enters service in may 1917 that reflects the epitome of french high-performance fighter design. it has very thin air foils like the wright flier and that allows it to go very fast. and it's fabric covered but it's that engine, the his spano see a 220 horsepower, have 8 engine that's the core. so you see the radiator shutters and it looks like a round engine but there's have a, have 8 engi.

there's a tight fit l metal covering that allows the air to flow over it more efficiently. have 8. so mark burr cut of the us span low see a company has designed a very important series of automobile engines in the pre-war era. he adapt this is to the aeronautical engines and he casts a row of cylinders out of a solid piece of aluminum and he has cooling passages in those aluminum blocks that allows improved cooling and more power. so instead of a rotary engine doing 110, 120 horsepower, you're looking at 220 horse power with these engines by the time they're introduced in the spad 13.

there's always a technological push pull over the western front in world war i in which the germans have an advantage with their thick air foil tubular fuselaged aircraft like that folker d. vii but the spad 13 is the french answer to that airplane. foeker. and it's not as maneuverable but it has the speed. it can dive away. so they are going to take this airplane and develop new group fighter tactics in response to german group fighter tactics. so this first generation of significant high-scoring french aces fly these airplanes in the french squadrons and so this becomes the -- as the highest-performance airplane, it has two 30 caliber machine guns flying through the propeller and the ability for these airplanes to fly fast and dive and climb away and come back and attack gives the french fighter squadron an advantage. one of the major technological innovations for fighter aircraft in world war i is the creation

of a gun synchronizer system. that means you can mount a machine gun in front of the pilot with a sight and as you point the airplane you can point your machine guns and hit your target. the problem is that you have a spinning wood propeller in the way so the creational of a mechanical linkage set up to a cam on the propeller shaft as the blade cross this is front of the two machine guns or one machine gun it turns off the machine gun and as the propeller blade passes the guns are turned back on. now as 1917 proceeds into 1918 and the entry to the united states into the world you have american air service pilots coming into the western front being equipped with french aircraft. there's not a "frontline" ready american fighter for the conflict and this particular spad 13 that you see here that is in american air service markings, it was built by one of the manufacturers contracted to make spads, there were 8400

spads made total and the 22nd ae aerosquadron was assigned this airplane. and a young pilot named ray brooks painted the name of his fiance's college on there, "smith college." and he had three previous airplanes so it's smith iv. and he goes into combat with this airplane. he scores one aerial kill and this particular spad 13, some other pilots in the same quad ron shoot down at least five more and so this is -- this pad is 13 flew with the first generation of american combat pilots. now ray brooks name this is airplane after his fiance's school and most people would name their airplane after their girlfriends themselves. but he made a conscious decision. he didn't want to have this airplane damaged sending it into the field and having the mechanic saying "ruthie is damage, we have to fix her." he wanted to keep her out of that situation and so he names it after her college.

smith iv is in its 1918 camouflage but you also see along the fuselage and wingsover smith iv these small black squares that have german crosses on them and those represent bullet holes shot through the fabric from combat so these are small indications of this being a combat airplane and surviving. the squares would have been applied by ground mechanics in the field because there's no need to completely recover the airplane. and one of the advantages of a strut-and-wire braced fabric airplane is that if the bullet goes through the fabric it passes through the other side so it just needs to be patched. that's the job of the mechanic to patch it to restore the integrity and then to keep fighting. now at the end of ward war one in november of 1918 this airplane is set aside by the army air service and brought back to the united states as to display what type of aircraft americans flew which was a

high-performance french fighter. but it's also given to the smithsonian institution where it stays in the collection for decades. it's not until the 1980s that the airplane is fully if you look at the panel, you can see fabric from the original airplane on the display. the fabric here is not original. it's restored fabric. . but nonetheless, this is one of four remaining spads in the world and tells how it was maximized and changed but still essentially the same in terms of the materials and the propulsion system and the systems that make it up. but it was a formidable combat fighter of world war i. and now we're going to look at an aerodefining airplane connected to charles lindbergh.

this airplane in may 1927 flew the 3600 miles in 33.5 hours from new york to paris. flown by charles lindhburg. his goal was to win the prize of $25,000 for the first non-stop flight from new york to paris. orteig was a hotel entrepreneur. and so that was the impetus for this flight. but what it represents in the history of aviation is part of the telling of the airplane and that transformation of the airplane from what the wright brothers created and how it transitions over the '20s and '30s to what we call the modern airplane. lindbergh was an unknown pilot. flying from if sflus -- st. louis to the chicago route, flying the mail, thinking about, is this possible. and building upon that idea, he

gets financiers from st. louis, he'd interact with them in the aviation circles and he gets the backing to purchase a long distance airplane or to build one. and what happens is he ends up in san diego with ryan airlines and he meets donald hall, their chief engineer and they design a purpose built transatlantic airplane from new york to paris. and lindbergh calls it the spirit of st. louis. this is a product of his vision of what a long distance airplane would be. it's not necessarily the most advanced airplane. it represents many of the known ideas about technologies and ideas that are durable with some gambles that he includes in the airplane, as well. working through the spring of 1937 he creates this airplane. it's a wood wing that's externally braced to the fuselage.

and it has underneath its fabric in the fuselage tubular steel framework. that's an innovation that emerges in world war i. and that is a diversion from this word bracing that we've seen since the wright brothers. but it still uses wires and it's still a framework that you would see with the internal brace construction. but you know it works. and then it's also the basic design of this ryan airplane called the m-2 they base this airplane on. this aircraft is designed for one thing, flying across the atlantic ocean with one pilot, which is a gamble. all of the other airplanes had mull. crew members as well as multiple engines. lindbergh makes the gamble because he says the lighter the airplane the more simpler, i can control it. this is an airplane built for endurance. 450 gallons of gasoline which doubles the weight to 4,000, 5,000 pounds. so he has to learn how to handle this airplane.

so when it's finished in april 1927, the first thing he does is he breaks a san diego to st. louis transcontinental speed record. he flies on to new york which is the jumping off point for this flight to paris. and so this is where lindbergh's choices really come into play in which you don't see a canopy on this airplane. you see a door on the side. he used a periscope that he would deploy so he could see forward when he's taxiing the airplane or swivel the tail so he could look out the window on the side. what's in front of him are the oil and main fuel tanks and then the engine. that's to get all of that in front of him, in case he crashes, he's got that all in front of him rather than having a big gasoline coming behind him crushing him to death or catching on fire and burning him alive. so he's making choices.

but look forward of the fuel tank area and you see the radial engine. that is a corner stone technolo technology. a radial engine cooled by the air traveling over the cylinders. so you see them sticking out there so they can be cooled as the air flows over them. but it's a reliable engine. it stays running for 33 hours. he knows that. he makes a conscious choice. that's an advanced technology he's embracing. wood wing externally braced, those are known technologies that work. but the state of the art is that engine and right in front of that engine is an aluminum alloy fixed pitch propeller. it's just like a wright broths propeller, it's fixed pitch, creating thrust for one operating regime but has a little innovation included in it and is ready by the time lindbergh, who in his memoir

says i want a metal propeller for the spirit of st. louis. and what i mean by that is that you can't change the angle of the blades in the air, but if you need to change the pitch on the ground, you can loosen two rings, change the pitch for whatever setting you want it to be. so they can get you off of the ground with that heavy weight of the fuel but give you enough cruise efficiency to get across the atlantic. it's a compromise. in many ways the airplane is a compromise to get lindbergh across the atlantic ocean. so the flight itself, lindbergh doesn't have advanced navigational tools like a gps. he had a compass and he had a method called dead reckoning. which you would use the stars and maps to plot your path.

he's going to fly the polar routes instead of flying over the shipping lanes. he's flying a much shorter distance over the curvature of the earth. he gambles that he's going to fly this route and as soon as he gets to europe he's going to figure out where he is and get to paris. he does that in the course of a day and a half and he lands just north of paris and is met by over 100,000 adoring fans, people cheering him on. and at that moment the unknown lindbergh, the flight technologist, the person who worked with don hall to create this airplane enters into this legendary status as probably the supreme aviator of the world, especially in the united states, in which he becomes a household name, and which the growth and the aviation industry is seen as a result of what he's done in this flight, even though it's an indication of things

that are moving along, but he really exacerbates and improves, expands the idea of an aviation industry. people want to learn to fly as a result of them. by christmas you can get a copy of the book "we" meaning lindbergh and the spirit together. this pop culture phenomena that lindbergh becomes is a result of the flight and it's the moment in which america really turns the page in terms of understanding the power of the airplane and the excitement for that. in this wake of this flight to paris, lindbergh returns with the spirit and he is going to do a national tour through 1927 in which hundreds of thousands of americans are going to see him flying, see the spirit. they've read about the flight, now they get to see him come to their hometown. by the end of the year lindbergh goes on a tour of latin america in which he's, you know, extending friendly relations with latin america and doing his

long distance flying there as well. and when you look at the front of the spirit, you see the flags of the nations that lindbergh visited during his latin america tour but you also see some military insignia there from the army and the marine units that he interacted with other the course of that tour. upon return of that flight in february and then in the spring of 1928 lindbergh gives the spirit of st. louis to the smithsonian institution. and that artifact stayed on display, arts and industries building, the old tin shed, throughout the history of the old national aerial museum and then is in display with the opening of the national mall build of the national air and space museum where it's been on display ever since. the artifact that you see behind me is the original spirit of st. louis. it's the original fabric. once again, one of thon