When it crossed the Atlantic, the Spirit of St. Louis had a silver nose. The whole plane was silver from tip to tail. The nose panels in particular were fabricated by hand out of aluminum sheeting. Those panels were then brush polished with their signature swirl marks — partly for decoration, but mostly to hide the subtle dents left by shaping hammers and english wheels. In the period photography, even though it’s black and white, it’s easy to see that the nose is not, in fact, gold. Yet as she hangs in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, her nose is a bright gold color. None of the historical accounts, including Lindbergh’s autobiography, explained how the nose of the plane went from silver to gold. It was a mystery, and 15 years ago the internet as we know it didn’t exist. We often said that we should just write the Smithsonian and see if they knew, but we never got around to it.

Today people use Google as a verb and Wikipedia makes the most obscure pieces of information available to your mobile telephone. For some unknowable reason, yesterday I had the thought to search the internet for information as to why the nose on The Spirit is gold. The search engines had nothing for me. Wikipedia made no reference to the nose panels whatsoever. Even the Air and Space Museum’s own website didn’t explain the golden nose. But while poking around, I found a contact form where anyone can send an inquiry to the museum archives staff. So I did! I got an email back a couple hours later saying that my question had been forwarded on to the curator. Less than a day later, I received an email from Dr. F. Robert van der Linden, the Chairman of the Aeronautics Division at the National Air and Space Museum. In his email he said the following:

Dear Mr. Salzman:

The nose of the Spirit of St. Louis is a golden color because of a well-intentioned but mistaken attempt by us to preserve the markings on the cowling.  We don’t know exactly when, but soon after the Smithsonian acquired the Spirit in May 1928, we sought to preserve the markings by applying a clear coat of varnish or shellac.  Unfortunately, over the years, this coating has yellowed with age.  While it has taken on a beautiful golden hue, the color is wrong.  The aluminum cowling should be in its natural silver color.  In the future, when we next conserve the aircraft, we will carefully remove the coating.  This can be done by a painting conservator.  Until then, the Spirit will keep its golden nose.

Sincerely,

Bob

What a fantastic answer! Although it would be great to know exactly when the protective lacquer had been applied, finally knowing the the answer as to why is very satisfying. As far as I know, this information isn’t even part of the exhibit. Not that it’s a big secret, it’s just fun to know things that even the great Google can’t find for you. What’s particularly thrilling, however, is that at some point in the future, the plane will go back to its original coloring. How fun. I’m exceedingly grateful to Dr. van der Linden for his quick, complete and candid response. Mystery solved. With information in hand, it’s now time to update the internet so that other people can find this info too. The moral of the story, support the historical societies that protect the history you care about. Without them, we will forget where we’ve come from and have even less idea where we’re headed.

Photos via Flickr users Rob Shenk and wallyg who were kind enough to share their great work via creative commons licensing.

A couple of my tweeps (@intheloop and @sandentotten) tweeted about the need, I responded, and now they’re featuring my #Obama hashed tweets on MPR’s website starting tonight. Cool. I’ll do my best to be interesting. Tune in.

You can follow my twitter feed here on my site (<—- check out the side bar), on Twitter, or see my and about 5 other local peoples’ #Obama tweets at Minnesota Public Radio.

Also, if you’re interested in my take on a healthcare solution, you can read the comment I made on this Fast Company article.

UPDATE — Definitely a great event, especially on such short notice. The Target Center could have done better getting people in and out of the building more quickly, but we did finally get seated — in the worst two seats in the house. D’oh! Once the upper deck opened up, we headed upstairs and ended up with a much better view. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any 3G service — so much for Tweeting. As for the event I really appreciated its focus and its brevity. It was not some droning, speechfest with speaker after speaker. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke first, both praising Minnesota on our successes in providing quality healthcare at low cost, and laying down a motivating reiteration of the need for nationwide healthcare reform. Her speech lasted only about five minutes, then it was time for the main event. President Obama appeared stage right, wearing in simply a dress shirt, slacks, no tie, and shaking hands with the edges of the group of medical professionals and other VIPs standing on the arena floor. President Obama was definitely the most dressed-down of the people presented on stage, but in a very down-to-business sort of way.

He got right to it. Obama is known, even by his detractors, as a prolific speaker and that reputation is well deserved. What I appreciated most about his remarks was that they were obviously well prepared, but not overtly formal. That more conversational style made them particularly engaging, I thought. President Obama reiterated the need for reform — siting specific stories, situations, and injustices present in the current system, as well as encouraging us that reform is in fact closer than it’s been in about 70 years. He strongly emphasized that “the status quo is not a viable alternative.” He also refreshingly acknowledged that much of the opposition was more about “defeating Obama” than an objection to healthcare reform. His matter-of-factness is refreshing amidst the acrimony of this debate. The speech had its soaring moments, but mostly it was a nice mix of policy points and factual clarifications. At one point I was worried it was only going to only be overview without the all important details of how. For example, the “how we pay for it” question is one the President has been a bit light on the details. Thankfully, he did actually lay out a series of sensible and seemingly realistic ways that healthcare reform can be theoretically deficit neutral while ensuring forward funding for medicare.

After outlining the policy plans in the most detail to date, President Obama took time out to specifically dispel many of the — hell, let’s go ahead and call them lies — being spread by the President’s fear-mongering opponents, the speech wrapped up with a simple story. He told us the origin of “fired up and ready to go” — how a single voice can change a room. How a room can change a city, a city a state, a state a country and a country the world. This was definitely the most soaring rhetoric of his speech. The place went nuts, of course, with the largest of several standing ovations given the President.

That was that. We made our way out, hopped back on the light rail and headed home. The event didn’t change my views on healthcare, but it did give us all a lot more detail on the actual plan being proposed. This debate has been desperate for clarification, and between this and last wednesday night’s event, the President is starting to do exactly that.

UPDATE — The White House YouTube channel just released the video of the President’s speech. Good stuff.

America is such an odd place. We pave the way in so many areas, yet when you compare us to Europe or Asia (whole continents, mind you), we’ve completely missed the boat on scooters until just this last season. I’m really hoping that gas prices and practicality converge again this summer to continue the upward trend in scooter sales.

The Wired article almost completely misses what Mr. Andreani was actually saying. He isn’t describing a trend within scooters at all. He’s describing a trend toward motorcycle riders wanting automatic transmissions and ending up with a couple more scooter-like machines from the big manufacturers. The only people who would ever really refer to the Burgman or the TMax as scooters are motorcycle riders. Scooterists at their most generous would call them “maxi-scooters.” What’s more, that segment of big scooters is hardly exploding amongst scooter riders — at least here in the US. The TMax is the first new offering in a long while and it’s a net of nothing since Yamaha no longer offers the Majesty.

Mr. Andreani spends just a moment talking about how smaller scooters have trended toward larger wheels, but that’s hardly breaking news. I also take issue with his description of scooters being classified only has “cheap” and “big.” Of course he’s only actually talking about the European market — which is vastly different than the US scooter market — but all the same, it’s a gross oversimplification. The difference between the US market and the rest of the world is a distinction that seems lost on the fine folks at Wired as well. Bigger wheeled scooters are indeed much more popular in Europe, but the overall style here in the US is still geared more toward something with classic Vespa cuteness. That’s what sells here in vast numbers. That’s still the trend. Genuine Scooter Company sells Buddy 125s faster than PGO can make them. Europe and Asia tend toward more modern, sport-styled scooters like PGO’s GMax or most of the Kymco and Piaggio-branded offerings. But the States are still all about cute.

More than anything, his comments don’t relate to any actual trends within scooters and Mr. Borroz completely misses Mr. Andreani’s assessment of the TMax. The TMax is not a city scooter by any sensible assessment, and Mr. Andreani doesn’t actually make that assertion. What he is actually talking about is the scooter-ization of a certain segment of the motorcycle market, which is a completely separate subject all together, and actually very interesting. Bad form, Wired.

This will easily be the best 17:28 of my day.