To celebrate the 110th anniversary of the organization that ultimately became NASA, the agency released a new collection of videos to highlight the history of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the ways it transformed flight over four decades.
Not long after the beginning of World War I, the United States Congress, concerned that America was lagging behind other countries, created a new committee to advance the nation’s flight technology development. On March 3, 1915, the NACA was founded “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution.”
While the NACA began as a committee of only 12 leaders representing government, military, and industry, it rapidly expanded through World War II to develop America’s flight capabilities for defense and commercial uses. The organization became home to some of the nation’s best and brightest aeronautical engineers and world-class facilities, transforming into NASA at the dawn of the Space Age in 1958.
The new video collection highlights some of NACA’s striking historic photography and celebrates this pioneering organization with a brief history of its formation, expansion, and groundbreaking aeronautics research at four centers across the United States — the current homes of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton Virginia, Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
Related Links
- The NACA’s 110th Anniversary Feature
- E-book: NACA to NASA to Now: The Frontiers of Air and Space in the American Century
- E-book: A Wartime Necessity: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and Other National Aeronautical Research Organizations’ Efforts at Innovation During World War II
