Charles H. Gibbs-Smith

Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith (* 1909 in Teddington , London , † 1981 ) was an English aviation historian .

biography

After attending school at Westminster School and studying at Harvard University , he joined the Victoria and Albert Museum as assistant curator in 1932 . During the Second World War he worked as an instructor for aircraft recognition in the Ministry of Information, where he developed his great passion for the history of aviation . After the end of the war, he returned to the Victoria and Albert Museum as director of the photographic collection in 1945 , before he was finally curator of its information and education department from 1947 to 1971.

In 1960 he wrote his authoritative work "Aviation - an Historical Survey From its Origins to the End of World War II" for the Science Museum London . In 1976, the Science Museum appointed him a Research Fellow . In 1978 he was finally appointed the Smithsonian Institution's first Lindbergh Professorship in the history of aviation at the National Air and Space Museum .

Publications

• Aviation, a historical survey from its origins to the end of World War II - 1970, London, Science Museum, new edition 2003, ISBN 1-900747-52-9
• Sir George Cayley's Aeronautics , 1796-1855 , 1962
• The Rebirth of European Aviation , 1974
• The Invention of the Airplane, 1799-1909 , 1966, London: Faber & Faber.
• Clément Ader - his flight claims and his place in history , 1968, London: Science Museum
• The airplane: an historical survey of its origins and development , 1960
• Other publications from LibraryThing.com

source

• Chambers Biographical Dictionary, p. 598, Edinburgh 2002, ISBN 0-550-10051-2