Michael Gorn seeks to inform and excite people about Dryden's history by bringing it to life in published books, monographs and articles that will be available to researchers, scholars and all people who have a passion for aeronautics.
As Dryden's new chief historian, Gorn intends to use the tools of the History Office to assist NASA researchers as they prepare for future projects by providing insight on past ones. He seeks to tell the stories behind the stories - such as those of the engineers, scientists, pilots and technicians whose research enabled Dryden's countless flights of discovery.
"History, if it's well applied, can change the perspective of people in the present day, because you have the support of past experience," he said.
And History Office resources can provide many benefits.
"A History Office enables an institution to be familiar with itself. In a sense, it provides encouragement in hard times because it allows you to look back at some of the great successes of the past and realize that success and failure are part of life; you realize you will have periods where things aren't going right. It has the advantage of giving concrete illustration about how to manage programs, how to get around technical difficulties. Another concrete advantage is that it shows you the value of thinking outside the box. The lifting bodies offer one example. In order to achieve important things, it doesn't necessarily require a lot of money. It requires - at the beginning - some imagination," Gorn said.
Gorn is familiar with the Center and its namesake Hugh L. Dryden, about whom Gorn wrote Monograph in Aerospace History No. 5 Hugh L. Dryden's Career in Aviation and Space. He also is writing on a full-length biography of Hugh L. Dryden.
And prior to his selection as Dryden's new chief historian, Gorn was under contract for the past five years writing Expanding the Envelope: Flight Research at NACA and NASA (published by the University Press of Kentucky in July 2001). He also served during this time as co-author with Richard P. Hallion on a revised and updated edition of On the Frontier: Flight Research at Dryden.
In comparing Expanding the Envelope to On the Frontier, Gorn said, "Expanding the Envelope is an attempt to step back and look at the whole mural of flight research from the beginning to the end. On The Frontier does a very good job of that for Dryden, but I'm trying to step back another 10 or 20 paces and even into the 19th Century to look at the whole American phenomenon of flight research," he said.
As Dryden's chief historian, Gorn wants to create and distribute a variety of products ranging from full-length books published by commercial presses to shorter publications that appeal to a different audience. Because people absorb information in different ways, Gorn said the History Office intends to package Dryden History to meet the different needs. For example, the History Office is planning a short pictorial history of the Center that will be less expensive to produce and can be widely distributed.
Gorn will use the many resources of the History Office. One asset is archivist Peter Merlin, who builds the electronic documentary database. Merlin is working to decrease the 50-year gap between the Center's beginning and the History Office's creation.
"We have a storehouse for lessons learned that benefits our current and future projects because researchers can look back and see what worked and what didn't. The History Office serves as the corporate memory for the Center," said Merlin.
The History Office answers hundreds of research questions each year by using the thousands of shelf feet of documents and resources available to researchers, academics and writers.
Historian Curtis Peebles contributes to the Dryden History program by conducting taped interviews with pivotal flight research figures. To date about 100 interviews have been transcribed, edited and catalogued. A new addition to that resource is the taped reflections of Dryden's Chief Scientist Ken Iliff, who gives his recollections of events and an interpretation of Reusable Launch Vehicles and hypersonic aircraft.
"I have always been interested in aerospace because I grew up in the 1960s during the space race. I remember John Glenn's first space flight. This job is a dream come true. Part of what I do is record interviews with historical aerospace figures. These interviews show the motivation, tension and the environment of events," Peebles said.
Video archives are another element of making history come alive. Video archivist Tony Moore is tasked with categorizing and maintaining the enormous collection of footage that dates back to the earliest days of the Center. Some of the footage is fragile and Moore is overseeing the retrieval and preservation of the early film onto digital video.
"I have seen some of this footage as a little boy. I want to save it for future generations of boys and girls to see," Moore said.
Gorn has been a public historian for 23 years. He received a doctorate in history from the University of Southern California in 1978 and served in the Air Force history program from 1981-91 first as a staff historian and then a command historian. He became Deputy Air Force Historian from 1993-95. He also served as the first Chief Historian for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 1991-93.
Gorn is a recipient of the National Air and Space Museum's Alfred V. Verville Fellowship in Aerospace History and the American Historical Association's Aerospace History Fellowship. He is the author of The Universal Man: Theodore Von Karman's Life in Aeronautics (1992) and Harnessing the Genie: Science and Technology Forecasting for the Air Force, 1944-1986 (1988). He also worked for five years as co-editor of the History of Aviation Book Series, published by the Smithsonian Institution Press.
