The San Diego Air & Space Museum received a $99,000 grant to process and catalog 165,000 historic photo negatives from the Atlas missile and space launch systems that were built designed, developed, tested and manufactured by the Convair/General Dynamics Corporation in San Diego. Designed as a Cold War deterrent, the Atlas was the nation’s first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). With over 500 successful launches, it is still used today as a space launch vehicle.

The two-year Federal grant was awarded to the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s Library & Archives Department by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) on behalf of the National Archives and Records Administration. In addition to processing and cataloging 165,000 images, 50,000 of them will be digitized and placed online.  

More information on the National Historical Publications and Records Commission can be found at: http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/about/

“The Atlas program was a critical component of the advancement of aerospace industry, and digitizing this collection of images is essential to unlocking its full historic potential and ensuring its long term survivability,” said Jim Kidrick, president of the San Diego Air & Space Museum. “Receiving this grant from the NHPRC is a direct reflection of the excellent and historically important work being conducted by our Museum’s Library & Archives.”

The Atlas digitization process is a continuation of the Museum’s Library & Archives ongoing Great Explorations: Increasing Access to Our Aerospace Heritage program. Through the digitization of the records from the Museum’s one-of-a-kind Convair/General Dynamics Atlas collection, Great Explorations will greatly advance research into the history of America’s national defense, the space program, the development of the aerospace industry, and the Cold War.

As ICBM technology advanced and the Atlas was no longer considered cutting-edge as a missile, it found a new life, a life perhaps even more important to history: It was modified and used as a space launch vehicle for the last four manned missions of Project Mercury, the first U.S. manned space program, which included the first American, John Glenn, to orbit the earth.

When Lockheed-Martin purchased the Convair/General Dynamics Space Systems Division in 1993, they acquired the nation’s most reliable space launch vehicle, the Atlas, but did not have much use for the records of its earlier heritage. Lockheed-Martin eventually donated the records documenting the Atlas heritage to the San Diego Air & Space Museum. The records gained by SDASM constitute a potential historic national treasure.

Once completed, the digitized materials will be available for viewing on the Museum library’s Flickr site. In addition, select images will be uploaded into a shared online portal, the Balboa Park Commons. Links to the digital images also will be added to the existing finding guide for the Convair/General Dynamics corporate papers, which will soon be uploaded to the Museum’s library online catalog system, Aerocat.

In 2013 the Museum began digitizing film on the Atlas history donated by Lockheed-Martin and United Launch Alliance. Of the 3,000 reels donated by the two companies, over 1,000 have been digitized and placed online on the Museum’s YouTube site.

For more information about the San Diego Air & Space Museum please visit www.sandiegoairandspace.org.

Check the following links for more information:

http://www.sandiegoairandspace.org/research/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/albums/72157649485000247

https://www.youtube.com/user/sdasmarchives/search?query=atlas