Midweek Matinee: Taking the Air, 1941 (Streamlining)

All photos are frame grabs from video below.

Where else can you get a history lesson, solid scientific research and a happy ending – wrapped in a patriotic theme – in less than nine minutes?

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Englishman Horatio Phillips (who we think looks a bit like a time-traveling Walter Matthau in this production) developed a functional wind tunnel and published pioneering findings on aerofoil wing designs. Applying these theories, he also constructed powered aircraft with multiple “venetian blind” wing configurations. They looked goofy and didn’t work particularly well, but he may have been the first to discover that both ostrich feathers and pipe smoke are ideal for studying airflow around various shapes.

But enough of others’ prior accomplishments: By 1941, America had gone all “streamlined” on the sea, in the air and on land. We’d built much larger and far more impressive testing facilities to confirm, well, many of the same air disturbance issues Mr. P. had noted some four decades previous.

We could now incorporate modern filming techniques of scale models, and place a camera operator in a car at speed to prove that your mother was absolutely correct when she yelled at you and your brother: “Never, ever, open the car doors — especially using your father’s good hydraulic jack — while driving at 50 mph.” And here’s why.

Wingtip shoe: Subtle humorists, these Jam Handy guys.

Nice rear three-quarter shot of the Chevy to show those modern rounded lines, and our cheerful automotive/aviation/naval-inspired trio is on their way.

Public domain archival footage courtesy of the Internet Moving Images Archive, in association with Prelinger Archives.