Description The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)'s first wind tunnel, located at Langley Field in Hampton, VA, was an open-circuit wind tunnel completed in 1920 and dedicated on June 11 that year. Essentially a replica of the ten-year-old tunnel at the British National Physical Laboratory, it was a low-speed facility which involved the use of one-twentieth-scale models. Because tests showed that the models compared poorly with the actual aircraft by a factor of 20, a suggestion was made to construct a sealed airtight chamber in which air could be compressed to the same extent as the model being tested. The new tunnel, the Variable Density Tunnel was the first of its kind and has become a National Historic Landmark.
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Credit: NASA
Image Number: L-00004
Date: April 1, 1921
Tags: NACA NASA NASA Langley Research Center wind tunnel aeronautics national historic landmark landmark 1921
Test section and balance for Atmospheric Wind Tunnel (AWT) #1. The 5 foot diameter circular test section and control room of NACA Tunnel No. 1. A Curtiss "Jenny" model can be seen mounted in the test section. Both a real JN4H and a highly accurate model were put through identical tests. The NACA engineers used this data to make the necessary corrections to the wind tunnel.
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Credit: NASA
Image Number: L-00008
Date: May 22, 1921
Tags: NACA NASA NASA Langley Wind Tunnel 1921 1.
Description Active aircraft biplane, NACA 29-38131, with model wing suspended during flight.
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Credit: NASA
Image Number: L-00130
Date Taken: June 22, 1921
Tags: NACA NASA NASA Langley Research Center airplane aeronautics 1921
Description The Variable Density Tunnel (VDT) on a rail car at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company where it was built. The Tunnel was shipped by barge to the Langley Memorial Laboratory in June 1922. The VDT was designed by Dr. Max Munk and it leap-frogged wind tunnel technology of the time putting Langley Lab and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at the forefront of aeronautical research in the 1920s.
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Credit: NASA
Image Number : L-1990-04352
Date: February 3, 1922
Tags: NACA NASA NASA Langley Research Center 1922
Workmen in the patternmakers' shop at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory manufacture a wing skeleton for a Thomas-Morse MB-3 airplane for pressure distribution studies in flight.
NASA Media Usage Guidelines
Credit: NASA
Image Number : L-00184
Date: June 1, 1922
Tags: NACA NASA NASA Langley Research Center aeronautics 1922