Picture This: A Century of Air Travel in Pictures

December 20, 2018

A Century of Air Travel in Pictures
By Melissa Lindberg

It's that time of year when many of us are getting ready to head to the airport and hop on a plane en route to family and friends for the holidays. Air travel, like many modern conveniences, is a perk easy to take for granted despite its relatively short history. A visual trip through the collections of the Prints & Photographs Division illustrates some of the developments in air travel over the past century.

Tony Jannus & Albert Berry, between 1910 and 1915. Photo by Bain News Service. https://ift.tt/2UYLaeP

In 1914 Tony Jannus became the first person to pilot a scheduled passenger flight, from St. Petersburg to Tampa, Florida. Taken sometime between 1910 and 1915, the photo above shows Jannus on the left, seated next to Albert Berry. Berry incidentally takes some credit for another first – he was by many accounts one of two thrill-seekers to successfully pioneer jumping from a plane!

The photo below, taken to mark the 25^th anniversary of the first commercial flight, shows a model of the Benoist plane flown by Jannus. The relatively primitive design of passenger planes operating in the 1910s may provide some perspective for those of us used to complaining about the discomforts of air travel today.

Model for silver anniversary of commercial aviation. Washington, D.C., Dec. 29. New Years Day will mark the 25th anniversary of commercial aviation. The first passenger air line was established between St. Petersburg, and Tampa, Fla. with Tony Jannus, a Washington, D.C., boy, piloting the plane. Paul E. Garber of the U.S. National Museum has secured this model of the original Benoist plane, which was used on the first flight, for the national Aircraft Collection of which he has charge…, 1938. Photo by Harris & Ewing. https://ift.tt/2PQ4yqM

Contrast the open cockpit of the Benoist with the spacious interior setup of this restored American Airlines Douglas DC-3. The model was used by American, TWA, United and other airlines in the 1930s and 1940s, and could travel from the west to east coast in about 15 hours. So, roomier seats, but a longer journey than we're used to in 2018.

Passenger cabin of the Flagship Knoxville, a fully restored DC-3 aircraft at the American Airlines C.R. Smith Museum on the campus of the American Airlines Flight Academy, at the southern end of DFW International Airport near the world headquarters of American Airlines, 2014. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. https://ift.tt/2UYLABV

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt is pictured below adding some detailing to a new Douglas airliner in 1940.

First Lady christens new fleet of airliner. Washington, D.C. January 4. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Putting the finishing touches on one of a new fleet of Douglas Airliners put into operation today by the Pennsylvania Central Airlines, 1940. Photo by Harris & Ewing. https://ift.tt/2PTraXc

Mid-century travel posters used by airlines to advertise their services made air travel look glamorous. They also illustrate the arrival of jet passenger travel in the 1950s and 1960s. Amazingly, some of the planes depicted on the posters from this period start looking a lot like the ones we fly today — note what appears to be a Boeing 707 jet on the Braniff International Airways poster as compared with the propeller-driven Lockheed Constellation on the TWA poster. Somehow I don't think the plane shown on the Braniff ad will be a far cry from the one I plan to board next week!