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At the Controls: The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Looks at Cockpits

May 11, 2002 - September 22, 2002

Museum: Air and Space Museum

Location: Flight and the Arts (Gallery 211)

At the Controls gave visitors an opportunity to view the cockpits of a number of the aircraft and spacecraft in the National Air and Space Museum collections. Many of these historically significant craft are one of a kind, others are well known, even by non-aviation buffs, for significant events in mankind's travel through air and space history.

The wonderful cockpit images created by Smithsonian photographers Eric Long and Mark Avino gave visitors an up-close-and-personal sense of just what the cockpit looks like in each of these craft. The particular vehicles were chosen to give visitors a sense of the advances and changes in technology; from the very simple hip cradle and wing-warping control of Orville and Wilbur Wright's 1903 Flyer to the magnificently modern glass cockpit in the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia.

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