Huntington Library Aeronautica Collection: Prints and Ephemera

This finding aid briefly describes the more than 600 prints and ephemera contained within the Huntington Library's Aeronautica collection. These materials date from 1762 to 1940 and document the early history of balloon flight primarily in France and England, as well as the use of aeronautical imagery in satirical, documentary, and decorative images. Items are housed either as loose and matted items in folders and boxes or pasted in one bound scrapbook.

The images and texts within this collection include illustrations, diagrams, and descriptions of balloons and parachutes, balloon ascents, descents, and accidents; portraits of aeronauts; and political cartoons and fanciful or documentary pictures that incorporate depictions of balloons, airships, and flying machines. The collection features prints chronicling the progression of early aeronautical history from the first manned balloon ascent launched by French brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier in 1783, to the well-publicized ascents of famed English balloonist Charles Green in the mid 1800s. While most materials concern the development of balloon flight, the collection also includes anomalous images of balloons such as in British satirical prints and in two 18th century Indian watercolors depicting scenes with demigods in flying machines (pri472 Box 1, Item No. 1, and pri475 Box 1, Item No. 1). The earliest dated image in the collection is a Scottish satirical print from 1762 depicting three men on a broom "Flying Machine" (RB 10015, Item No. 2:2), and the most recently issued item is a booklet of photostat facsimiles of trade cards held in the Bella C. Landauer Aeronautical Collection, copyrighted 1940 (RB 240367).

Among the individual aeronauts, aviators, engineers, inventors, and scientists most frequently referenced and depicted in the collection are British aeronauts George Biggin, Robert Cocking (1776-1837), Charles Green (1785-1870), and James Sadler (1753-1828); Italian-English aeronaut Vincenzo Lunardi (or Vincent Lunardi) (1759-1806); and French aeronauts François Arban (1815-1849), Jean-Pierre Blanchard (1753-1809), Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles (1746-1823), Andre Jacques Garnerin (1769-1823), Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier (1756-1785), Joseph Michel Montgolfier (1740-1810), Anne-Jeane Robert (1758-1820), and Marie-Noel Robert (1760-1820).

Item types consist primarily of prints, illustrations, and broadsides, but also include ephemera such as handbills, advertisements, original drawings and watercolors, invitations and tickets, handwritten notes, newspaper and magazine clippings, handwritten notes, scraps of fabric from balloons and parachutes, and sheet music. Languages represented include French, English, German, Dutch, and Latin.

The materials were first described by the Huntington Library in paper-based box lists and catalog records beginning the 1930s and this finding aid builds off of the descriptions found therein. Two items listed in earlier box lists and included in this finding aid (pri 470 Box 4, Item No. 44a and pri472 Box 3 Item, No. 28) were identified as missing.