The San Diego Air & Space Museum Library and Archives houses some of earliest images taken in California that show one man's vision of how we can take to the air.  Over 30 years before the Wright Brother's successful flight, a man designed an "Improved Aerial Machine" that while impractical in many ways, did realize the need for "paddle wheels...by their combined action on the atmosphere, to raise and propel the vessel through it."  Or, what we would call propellers.  This machine was awarded a patent in 1870 and this patent is housed in a special collection.  However, what is most amazing about this collection is that it includes two tintypes of a model of this Aerial Machine that appear to be taken at the time that the patent was submitted.  This means that these tintypes are some of the oldest surviving images in California and perhaps America.  Tintypes are a photographic method that was introduced in the 1850s and became popular in the later part of that century.  

The 155 year old tintypes in the Keith collection, showing a model of the Aerial Machine.

This collection belongs to Alexander P. Keith, who hailed from Eaton, Massachusetts.  He came West to work in the gold mines, and made his fortune in Nevada in 1859-60. He used part of his new found fortune to work on his vision of a flying machine.  

A portrait of Mr. Keith from his collection.

Keith would return to Boston, where he would marry Anna Hicks and then move San Diego in the early 1880s where they had two daughters, Mabel M. and Elizabeth. Only after Keith’s death did his family learn of his invention and patent. It is said in the few articles on Keith’s invention, that the only things Mr. Keith died on May 3, 1930 in Wynola, CA and is buried at Nuevo Memory Gardens, in Ramona, CA.  The collection was donated to the Museum by a family member in 2009. 

An illustration from the Keith patent submission.

Not only does the Keith collection hold very rare archival material, it contains the dreams and visions of some one who dared to dream of taking to sky.  To learn more about these materials, read the finding guide here and you can view images from the collection here.