Government

This is the home page for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's History Office. A brief essay introduces NASA and its history, while a fact sheet (with several photographs) provides a longer description of NASA's projects from the 1950s to the present. Deeper in the site are extensive histories of NASA's (and its predecessor NACA's) activities in air flight, satellites, space probes and manned exploration of space. A long list of NASA personnel, with biographies, adds to the detail of the site, and detailed chronology of NASA's history is also available. In addition, there are dozens of technical diagrams and drawings for the various space craft NASA has built, including the Space Shuttle and the original Mercury capsules. An excellent set of search functions, site maps and topical indices allows visitors to find information on virtually any NASA program or person.

This site from NASA contains a brief biography and photograph of the physicist and "father of modern rocket propulsion," Robert Hutchings Goddard. Among the many firsts by Goddard listed, is the first liquid fuel rocket (1926), which led to the development of military missiles and the possibility of space exploration. A link on the liquid fueled rocket leads to several photographs and engineering sketches and an account of its inaugural flight. Statistics (size, employees, locations, funding, milestones) about the NASA center which is named after Goddard are also available.

The collection is divided into seven general themes: Civil War, Slavery and Abolition, Religion, Education, Self-Help and Self-Improvement, Travel and Westward Expansion, and Poetry. Each section opens with a 200-word descriptive essay, and each book featured on the site is accompanied by notes on the author, full title of the work, date and place of publication, and the publisher. The site is keyword searchable and can be browsed by subject, author, and title. The site is ideal for exploring late-19th-century literature and popular culture.

This American Memory site records the mapping of North America and the Caribbean from 1750 to 1789 through images of maps in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress. Most items on the site are also included among the 2000 images in Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789: A Guide to the Collections of the Library of Congress, compiled by John R. Sellers and Patricia Molen van Ee (1981). Currently the site contains roughly 2000 images. Maps and charts will be added to the online exhibit gradually. Selected images include original manuscript drawings by famous mapmakers like Samuel Holland, John Hills, and John Montresor; maps from the personal collections of men like Admiral Richard Howe and the comte de Rochambeau; and large groups of maps by three major 18th-century London publishers: Thomas Jeffreys, William Faden, and Joseph Frederick Wallet des Barres. The online collection allows researchers to compare editions, styles, and techniques of mapmakers from Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, and the United States, and to follow the development of specific maps from the manuscript sketch to the finished, printed version. Each image is accompanied by descriptive notes (100-150 words) and a list of the medium, date and place of publication, condition, call number, and repository. The site also includes a 1500-word essay on mapmaking during the American Revolutionary era and links to 12 other American Memory sites containing related materials. Researchers can browse this site by geographic location, subject, creator, and title, and can search the site by keyword. This site is ideal for students and teachers interested in mapmaking in the 18th century and in exploring how maps helped to illustrate American culture.

This is a gallery of photos of Chuck Yeager. The images may be interesting, but there is no supplemental information on the site.

A Library of Congress Manuscript Division online exhibit to celebrate the Manuscript Division's centenary, this site contains approximately 90 representative documents from the 15th to the mid-20th century. The selected documents include the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, congressmen, Supereme Court justices, military officers, diplomats, reformers, artists, writers, scientists, and other Americans who made a mark in history. Most items fall with eight categories that reflect the division's strengths: "The Presidency"; "Congress, Law, and Politics"; "Military Affairs"; "Diplomacy and Foreign Policy"; "Arts and Literature"; "Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention"; "African-American History and Culture"; "Women's History"; and "Miscellany." Each theme contains a roughly 250-word essay with links to digital reproductions of selected documents. A detailed description (200 words) accompanies each document, and additional information about the collections from which a document came is available through links to the collection records and finding aids. The exhibit also includes roughly 25 images, primarily in the "Science, Medicine, Exploration and Invention" category. There is a special presentation entitled "Collecting, Preserving, and Researching History: A Peek into the Library of Congress Manuscript Division." This site provides a description of the division, its holdings, definitions of terms like "personal papers" and why they are important, how the Library of Congress acquires manuscripts, how the staff prepares, conserves, and stores them, and who uses the documents. The site also has links to the Library of Congress's ordering and reproduction policies, the American Memory site, and to the Library of Congress collection catalogs. This easily navigable site is keyword and subject searchable. This site is ideal for conducting research in many areas of American History, as well as answering the question: "What do archives do?"

This site documents the NASA Apollo missions to the moon from 1969-1972. The site includes mission summaries, crew bios, flight plans, communication transcripts, and more. Special features of the site are video and audio files, and supplemental commentary by most of the Apollo astronauts. Technical descriptions of the tools and equipment help readers understand the astronauts' work. This site offers a large collection of materials concerning the nuts and bolts of the Apollo flights with some supplemental historical background added for context. The site navigation is a little cluttered but the available information gives an important window into the workings of NASA and the Apollo missions.

The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collection includes digital images of measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for 10,000 historic structures and sites dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. These collections display building types and engineering technologies from a farmhouse to a pickle factory, from churches to the Golden Gate Bridge. New material is added monthly. A gallery of images includes 36 photographs and 18 drawings of 50 structures, one from each state in the U.S. The site is searchable by geographic location, keyword, and a subject index that is organized by structure type. For each structure, the site provides from one to ten drawings, from one to 30 photographs, and from one to 50 pages of HABS text in facsimile detailing the structure’s history, significance, and current physical condition. Useful for a specialized audience, for architectural historians, or for those looking for illustrations and examples.

This site offers a wide range of historical information pertaining to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville Alabama. This information focuses on the history of the arsenal, its role in certain conflicts such as World War II and the first Gulf War, and also the contribution of the arsenal to specific military programs, especially the development of missiles and early space flight. The site includes some interesting images, oral histories, scanned military documents, and desciptions of activities at the arsenal during various time periods. The site is a little jumbled, but the information is worth wading through for those interested in the history of the military and military technology.

This excellent site features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles documenting Thomas Edison's corporate impact on the history of American entertainment. Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)—prolific inventor, manufacturer, and businessman—patented 1,093 inventions, including the phonograph, the kinetograph (a motion picture camera), and the kinetoscope (a motion picture viewer). All are searchable by keyword, title, or subject; movies are presented in QuickTime, Mpeg and RealMedia formats and a capsule description of each film is provided. Special pages focus on the life of the great inventor and histories of Edison's contribution to motion picture and sound recording technologies. Part of the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress, drawn from collections in the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.