One From the Very Early Days

As some of you may know, my wife runs an eBay business where she sells various items that we find at auctions throughout North Texas. Recently, I was able to pick up about 300-400 model airplane magazines from the early '50s to the late '70s. I plan on reselling most of them, but I'm keeping the ones that contain any information on model rocketry, such as ads or articles. I also plan to share the really interesting stuff with you here!

Therefore, let me first share an article from the January 1959 issue of "Flying Models." It is simply called "Jupiter C" and was written by Gene Thomas. When I first read the article, I thought that "Gene Thomas" might be a pseudonym for G. Harry Stine, since the writing style is similar, and since his company is so prominently mentioned.  However, upon further research (although admittedly not much further) I found that Gene Thomas was actually a model airplane guy and that he published a series of airplane scale data packs. Apparently, he also dabbled in rockets, at least once anyway.

Anyway, here are the scans from the article. Just click on them to enlarge them. I hope you enjoy!

The cover makes no mention of the rocket...

There ya go! It is interesting to see how the modeler had to make literally everything from scratch, including the launch system! However, there were some kits available, and I find it amusing that this ad was in the back of the same issue:

I "Googled" Model Dynamics, but had no luck...

I hope you enjoyed our blast from the past! Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!