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NASA’s Glenn Delgado Receives US Women’s Chamber of Commerce Award


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      A model of the new campus shows that it contained nine primary buildings—Administration, Flight Research, Engine Research, Technical Services, Fuels and Lubrication, Engine Propeller Research, Research Equipment, and the Altitude Wind and Icing Research tunnels. Credits: NASA On January 23, 1941, local authorities, military representatives, and agency officials assembled in Cleveland to initiate construction of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) new research laboratory. NACA Director of Research George Lewis stated, “I feel confident today in saying that this new aircraft engine research laboratory will be the mecca for all the world’s aircraft engine engineers and research workers.”
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      The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce scheduled a full day of activities for that cold January Thursday in 1941. In the morning, the cadre of officials toured the Alcoa and the Cleveland Pneumatic Tool Company plants. The former was a key supplier of aluminum aircraft parts and the latter produced landing gears for the Douglas XB–19—then, the nation’s largest bomber.
      Afterwards the group joined 240 local businessmen in the Hotel Cleveland’s Red Room for a luncheon hosted by Cleveland’s newly elected mayor Edward Blythin and Chamber of Commerce President Frederick Crawford. The George Worthington Hardware Company presented the NACA with a chrome-plated pick and shovel to be used for the groundbreaking.
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      In the afternoon the group traveled out to the construction site adjacent to Cleveland Municipal Airport. Shortly after 3 p.m., Lewis struck the ground with the chrome pick to loosen the soil, which Major General George Brett, acting chief of the Army Air Corps, then scooped up. The moment was immortalized by a local newspaper photographer.
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      NASA’s Glenn Research Center
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      Ray Sharp in his in December 1946. He began his NACA career at Langley in 1922 and transferred to the Cleveland lab in August 1941.NASA In a somewhat surprising move, the NACA assigned construction manager Ray Sharp the responsibility for running the laboratory on a permanent basis. At Langley and Ames, technically skilled engineers performed that task. Sharp, who had a law degree but no formal scientific or engineering background, was assisted by Executive Engineers Carlton Kemper and Addison Rothrock. Sharp managed the day-to-day activities, while Rothrock and Kemper supervised the research. In 1949, Abe Silverstein, who had helped design and operate Langley’s Full Scale Wind Tunnel, became Chief of Research.
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      Members of the Old Timers Club, all former Langley employees, meet for their annual luncheon in March 1948. Back row, left to right: Harold Gerrish, Achilles Gellales, Clarence Decker, Carlton Kemper, Hampton Foster, William Dewey. Front row, left to right: Emery Gilbert, Charles Moore, Dale McConnaha, Addison Rothrock, Oscar Schey, Arthur Tesman.NASA The transition from the NACA to NASA in 1958 brought a number of changes to the organization, including the transfer of Silverstein and a number of other key Lewis employees to Headquarters and Langley’s Space Task Group. There was also a shift from the NACA’s mostly in-house research to NASA’s management of external development contracts. The new space agency also dramatically increased the size of its staff in the early 1960s. Silverstein, who replaced Sharp as Director in 1961, knew the importance of camaraderie and successfully encouraged the older NACA veterans to interact socially with the new recruits.
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      Langley’s legacy is still visible at the Center today in its inductees into the Glenn Hall of Fame, a historic district containing the original facilities, and the campus’s lack of sidewalk plots or tree lawns. The Southerners had not anticipated the need to plow snow when designing the laboratory.
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      This article originally appeared in NASA History News & Notes, Volume 33, Number 4, Fourth Quarter 2016.
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