Paul Kollsman Fund Libraries Scrapbook

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of a scrapbook of press releases and clippings regarding the founding of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences' Paul Kollsman Library and Pacific Aeronautical Library. The scrapbook also includes portrait photographs of Kollsman and F. W. Magin, President of the Square D Company; a menu signed by attendees of a luncheon held in honor of Kollsman and Magin at Rockefeller Center, New York City, on July 18, 1940; a list of organizations using the Kollsman Library during 1940 to 1941; and a portrait of and biographical information relating to Sherman Fairchild.

Arrangement

Collection is a single item.

Biographical / Historical

Paul Kollsman (1900--1982), a German immigrant who came to the United States in 1923, founded the Kollsman Instrument Company in Elmshurst, Long Island, New York, in 1928, to manufacture precision aeronautical instruments. In 1939, the Kollsman Instrument Company was acquired by the Square D Company of Detroit, Michigan. On June 26, 1940, it was announced by the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences (IAS), a scientific society founded in 1932 that was made up of leading aeronautical specialists, that Paul Kollsman and Square D had provided the IAS with an endowment of $50,000 to found an aeronautical lending library at Rockefeller Center, New York City (home of the IAS). The Paul Kollsman Library (as it was known) was a library of books, pamphlets, and other published materials which could be borrowed by people interested in aeronautics via postal mail within the United States. In 1941, $10,000 from the original endowment (the Paul Kollsman Fund) was used to found the Pacific Aeronautical Library at Hollywood, California, which was opened on October of that year. Kollsman provided an additional $65,000 to the IAS on December 17, 1941, to further aid in the operation of these libraries. The Institute of Aeronautical Sciences merged in 1963 with the American Rocket Society to form the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).