A Brief History Of Drones

An inside look at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s UAS collection

- Patrick Sherman

Editor’s note: In this special, two-part report from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., Patrick Sherman of the Roswell Flight Test Crew sits down with curator Roger Connor to talk about the museum’s rapidly expanding collection of modern uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) as well as the history of drones, which begins not long after the Wright brothers’ historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. To me, the National Air and Space Museum is much more than one nation’s repository for aviation memorabilia: It is a secular shrine, a place to encounter the artifacts that will forever define human achievement in aeronautics. Among these sacred relics are the Bell X-1, the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound, with ace pilot Chuck Yeager at the controls; the Spirit of St. Louis, which Charles Lindbergh successfully guided to the first nonstop, solo crossing of the Atlantic; and the Wright Flyer, designed, built, and flown by Orville and Wilbur Wright, a pair of bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio.

At the dawning of a new era in aviation, defined by pilotless aircraft weighing just a few pounds, I was curious to see how the Smithsonian is adapting. To be sure, it is collecting and preserving the aircraft that make historic contributions, according to Roger Connor, who curates the museum’s drone collection. As we began our discussion, however, he turned first to the history of drones—a gentle reminder that the future always flows from the past.

“The very first efforts to build an autonomous aircraft in the early 20th century were aimed at creating an aerial torpedo, such as the Curtiss-Sperry Flying Bomb and the Kettering Bug,” Connor explains.