Introduction
If you have stumbled on to this site through a search, you may be a little confused. This webpage is a portfolio for a PhD history student's web design practicum. The class is part of George Mason University's Center for history and New Media. The Blog and assignements are class exercises. The design of this page reflects the final project, which is an experiment for an exhibit that the author is co-curating at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum entitled "Time and Navigation".
Time and Navigation
The Tupolev ANT-25 represents one of the great navigational feats of the 1930s - a non-stop flight from Moscow to San Jancinto, CA by way of the North Pole (July 14, 1937).
The primary subject of the final project represented on this page is the interpretation of historical aeronautical charts using digital tools. This section is intended as a prototype of a feature that will be included on the exhibition website for the National Air and Space Museum's Time and Navigation exhibition, scheduled to open in 2013. The air navigation portion of the exhibition will focus on the breakthroughs made in positioning, navigation and timing techniques between 1927 and 1945. Many of the great flights of navigation in this period will be featured as will the importance of new navigational technologies to the military during World War II. Charts are an ideal lens through which to interpret the three core air navigation technologies - dead reckoning, radio navigation and celestial navigation. Each chart reflects a technological underpinning as well as a historical context. The purpose of this prototype is to bring that historical context and technological underpinning to the fore while rendereing the traditionally opaque (at least to outside observers) language of the navigation chart.
Useful Links
To understand some of the more obscure aspects of the underlying technology associated with aeronautical charts of the 1930s and 1940s, I've added several links that may be of some use.
