Aerospace Modeling

As a child growing up in the 1940's and 1950's we had no real understanding of space flight.  Sure, we had Buck Rogers and Space Cadets, but Sky King was real life to us, sitting in front of the radio each afternoon.  Dick Tracy had his wrist radio and we had "Atom Bomb" rings with a secret message compartment.  Many of us played cowboys and Indians, had scooters, roller skates, balsa wood gliders and made friends by throwing rocks at each other (an early form of male bonding).  Our early life knowledge of solid fuel rockets was learned on the 4th of July.  My first model airplane was a hard rubber, silhouette model used the the Navy for training.  The late 1940's found the war over, cars had radios and gas was plentiful; 1950 had us at war in Korea.

In the fifth grade I bought my first airplane kit, the Bell X-1 rocket plane piloted by Chuck Yeager.  It was a solid wood model about 6 inches long.  That was followed shortly by a control line model and a .049 cubic inch gas engine.  The plane and engine never mated, but the engine did test runs nailed down to a bench on the back porch.  Many plastic models followed from time to time.

Science was a hot subject; crystal set radios, chemistry sets, electric toys, mostly paid for with paper routes or collecting scrap metal and pop bottles.

Just a start here, what did YOU do before the age of electronics?

Armchair