May 27 1931

From The Space Library

First full-scale wind tunnel for testing airplanes was dedicated at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory of the NACA, engineer-in-charge of construction and operation, Smith J. De France, explained details to the annual Aircraft Engineering Research Conference.

The NACA tank to provide data on water performance of seaplanes was demonstrated by Starr Truscott. Its channel length was enlarged from 2,020 feet to 2,900 feet in October 1937.

Auguste Piccard, Swiss physicist, and Charles Knipfer made first balloon flight into stratosphere, reaching a height of 51,777 feet in a 17-hour flight from Augsburg, Germany, to a glacier near Innsbruck, Austria. The balloon has a diameter of 100 feet and holds 500,000 cubic feet of hydrogen.