This year, NASA is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, with events including three days of discussion and storytelling with notable aerospace experts at the Langley Centennial Symposium. In Langley's early years of crafting flight, aviation pioneers flocked to the center for engineering conferences. This photo was taken in Langley's Full Scale Tunnel during the 1934 Aircraft Engineering Research Conference, with Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes in attendance.
The Full Scale Tunnel facility was built in 1930 to test full-sized aircraft and large-scale models. Wind tunnels are carefully designed manmade structures that channel and move air or other gases so that the airstream's effects on objects are determined without actual takeoff and flight. The creation and development of wind tunnels at Langley would literally change the shape of all things aerial. Seventy-eight years of testing, from biplanes through spacecraft, and most of the military planes that made a difference in this nation’s wars since 1931 have gone through the tunnel. From humble beginnings in the early 1920s to today's experiments in upgraded facilities with state-of-the-art computers, sensors and supporting instrumentation, Langley wind tunnels today number among the world's leaders in aeronautical design analysis.
Image Credit: NASA
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