The Aeronautical Museum: Its Function in Education and Culture

THE tree of exact knowledge of Science and Technology is now so great that the whole growth is beyond the practical compass of a single museum; the branches, while interrelated through the central stem, are very numerous and the knowledge increasingly diverse in application, so that some differentiation is necessary for profitable study. This is particularly the case in subjects where the application and usage of the knowledge has wide social implications, such as in aeronautics. It is idle to consider human flight apart from the uses to which it may be put and its potential value; to appreciate the full significance of flight it is necessary not only to understand the technical basis of aircraft, but also the vicissitudes of human progress whereby the machine came to be invented and highly developed. For this reason, the treatment of aeronautics in a museum should go beyond the treatment accorded to some other branches of science and technology.