U.S. Route 66 – Historic main street of America

     It’s labeled Mother Road or the Main Street of America. It also known as the Will Rogers Highway. 

     It became one of the most famous roads in the United States. 

     It’s the Route 66 (or U.S. Route 66 or simply US 66).

     Route 66 crosses eight States and three time zones.

     From Chicago to Santa Monica, if you love adventures on the road in direction east to west, catch your Harley Davidson and go for it! You will have a great time.

     Route 66 was one of the original highways within the U.S. Highway System.

     It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year.

     The highway ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before ending at Santa Monica, California, covering a total of 2,448 miles (3,940 km).

     US 66 served as a major path for those who migrated west, especially during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and the road supported the economies of the communities through which it passed.

     The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon.

     

     People doing business along the route became prosperous due to the growing popularity of the highway, and those same people later fought to keep the highway alive in the face of the growing threat of being bypassed by the new Interstate Highway System.

     The route was inaugurated on 11^th November 1926.

     In rising of the route, the publicity worked: several dignitaries, including Will Rogers, greeted the runners at certain points on the route. The race ended in Madison Square Garden, where the $25,000 first prize (equal to $356,298 in 2017) was awarded to Andy Hartley Payne, a Cherokee runner from Oklahoma. The U.S. Highway 66 Association also placed its first advertisement in the July 16, 1932, issue of the Saturday Evening Post. The ad invited Americans to take US 66 to the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. A U.S. Highway 66 Association office in Oklahoma received hundreds of requests for information after the ad was published. The association went on to serve as a voice for businesses along the highway until it disbanded in 1976.

     Traffic grew on the highway because of the geography through which it passed. Much of the highway was essentially flat and this made the highway a popular truck route. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s saw many farming families, mainly from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas, heading west for agricultural jobs in California. US 66 became the main road of travel for these people, often derogatorily called "Okies" or "Arkies." During the Depression, it gave some relief to communities located on the highway. The route passed through numerous small towns and, with the growing traffic on the highway, helped create the rise of mom-and-pop businesses, such as service stations, restaurants, and motor courts, all readily accessible to passing motorists.

     Much of the early highway, like all the other early highways, was gravel or graded dirt. Due to the efforts of the U.S. Highway 66 Association, US 66 became the first highway to be completely paved in 1938. Several places were dangerous: more than one part of the highway was nicknamed "Bloody 66" and gradually work was done to realign these segments to remove dangerous curves.

     However, one section through the Black Mountains outside Oatman, Arizona, was fraught with hairpin turns and was the steepest along the entire route, so much so that some early travelers, too frightened at the prospect of driving such a potentially dangerous road, hired locals to navigate the winding grade. The section remained as US 66 until 1953 and is still open to traffic today as the Oatman Highway. Despite such hazards in some areas, US 66 continued to be a popular route.

     During World War II, more migration west occurred because of war-related industries in California. US 66, already popular and fully paved, became one of the main routes and also served for moving military equipment.

     In the 1950s, US 66 became the main highway for vacationers heading to Los Angeles.

     In 1953, the Oatman Highway through the Black Mountains was completely bypassed by a new route between Kingman, Arizona, and Needles, California; by the 1960s, Oatman, Arizona, was virtually abandoned as a ghost town.

     The beginning of the decline for US 66 came in 1956 with the signing of the Interstate Highway Act by President Dwight D. Eisenhower who was influenced by his experiences in 1919 as a young Army officer crossing the country in a truck convoy (following the route of the Lincoln Highway), and his appreciation of the autobahn network as a necessary component of a national defense system.

During its nearly 60-year existence, US 66 was under constant change. As highway engineering became more sophisticated, engineers constantly sought more direct routes between cities and towns.

     US 66 underwent many improvements and realignments over its lifetime, and it was officially removed from the United States Highway System in 1985 (2^nd of June), after it had been replaced in its entirety by segments of the Interstate Highway System. Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway of the name "Historic Route 66", which is returning to some maps. Several states have adopted significant bypassed sections of the former US 66 into the state road network as State Route 66.

     US 66 has been a fixture in popular culture. Pixar's 2006 animated film Cars describes the decline of a once-booming Radiator Springs, nearly a ghost town once its mother road, US 66, was bypassed by Interstate 40. The movie's success generated a resurgence of public interest in US 66.

     The National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. has a section on US 66 in its "America on the Move" exhibition.

Uncle Sam – I want you

     Uncle Sam (initials U.S., the same of United States) is a common national personification of the American government or of the United States themselves.

     According to legend, he came into use during the War of 1812 and was supposedly named for Samuel Wilson. The actual origin is obscure. Since the early 19th century, Uncle Sam has been a popular symbol of the US government in American culture and a manifestation of patriotic emotion. While the figure of Uncle Sam represents specifically the government, the goddess Columbia represents the United States as a nation.

     The first reference to Uncle Sam in formal literature was in the 1816 allegorical book The Adventures of Uncle Sam in Search After His Lost Honor by Frederick Augustus Fidfaddy.

     Other possible references date to the American Revolutionary War: an Uncle Sam is mentioned as early as 1775, in the original lyrics of "Yankee Doodle", though it is not clear whether this reference is to Uncle Sam as a metaphor for the United States, or to an actual person named Sam. The lyrics as a whole celebrate the military efforts of the young nation in besieging the British at Boston. The 13th stanza is:

Old Uncle Sam come there to change

Some pancakes and some onions,

For 'lasses cakes, to carry home

To give his wife and young ones.

     The precise origin of the Uncle Sam character is unclear, but a popular legend is that the name "Uncle Sam" was derived from Samuel Wilson, a meatpacker from Troy, New York who supplied rations for American soldiers during the War of 1812. 

     There was a requirement at the time for contractors to stamp their name and where the rations came from onto the food they were sending. Wilson's packages were labeled "E.A – US." When someone asked what that stood for, a co-worker jokingly said, "Elbert Anderson [the contractor] and Uncle Sam," referring to Wilson, though the "US" actually stood for United States.

     The well-known "recruitment" image of Uncle Sam was first created by James Montgomery Flagg during World War I. 

     The image was inspired by a British recruitment poster showing Lord Kitchener in a similar pose. It is this image more than any other that has influenced the modern appearance of Uncle Sam: an elderly white man with white hair and a goatee, wearing a white top hat with white stars on a blue band, a blue tail coat, and red-and-white-striped trousers.

     Flagg's depiction of Uncle Sam was shown publicly for the first time, according to some, on the cover of the magazine Leslie's Weekly on July 6, 1916, with the caption "What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” More than four million copies of this image were printed between 1917 and 1918. Flagg's image was also used extensively during World War II. 

Steve Jobs’s speech - June 12, 2005 - Stanford University

Steve Jobs’s speech - June 12, 2005 - Stanford University

     “You’ve got to find what you love”

     This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

     I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

     The first story is about connecting the dots.

     I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

     It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

     And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

     It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

     Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

     None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

     Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

     My second story is about love and loss.

     I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

     I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

     I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

     During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

     I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

     My third story is about death.

     When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

     Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

     About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

     I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

     This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

     No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

     Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

     Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

     Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

     Thank you all very much.

     Steve Jobs

Nicknames, slogans and mottos of the fifty states of United States of America

Each of the fifty US states has a nickname. It is one of the most folkloric customs of the United States of America for many reasons, from patriotism to remember some of the historical peculiarities that the state has been in the past 240 years. Plants, animals, ideas. It all goes well for being written on placards or official flags and to outline in two words the history of each state.

Below are reported the nicknames of the US states, including (in bold type) those officially used or traditionally assigned to states or districts in the United States.

1.      Alabama

Yellowhammer State, Cotton Plantation State, Cotton State, Heart of Dixie, Lizard State, Camellia State

2.      Alaska

The Last Frontier,

Great Land, Land of the Midnight Sun, Land of the Noonday Moon, Seward’s Folly, Seward’s Ice Box, Icebergia, Polaria, Walrussia, and Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden

3.      Arizona

The Grand Canyon State

Apache State, Aztec State, Baby State, Copper State, Italy of America, Sand Hill State, Sunset State, Sweetheart State, Valentine State

4.      Arkansas

The Natural State

Bear State, Bowie State, Hot Spring State, Land of Opportunity, Razorback State, Toothpick State, Wonder State, Diamond State

5.      California

The Golden State

El Dorado State, The Land of Sunshine and Opportunity, Golden West, Grape State, Land of Milk and Honey, Land of Fruits and Nuts, Where Stars are Buried, The Cereal Bowl of the Nation, The Eureka State, The Bear State (or Republic), The Sunshine State (disused)

6.      Colorado

Centennial State

Buffalo Plains State, Colorful Colorado, Columbine State, Highest State, Lead State, Mother of Rivers, Rocky Mountain Empire, Rocky Mountain State (disused), Silver State (disused), Switzerland of America

7.      Connecticut

Constitution State

Nutmeg State, Charter Oak State, Blue Law State, Freestone State, Land of Steady Habits

8.      Delaware

The First State

Chemical Capital, Corporate Capital, Diamone State, Blue Hen State or Blue Hen Chicken State, Home of Tax Free Shopping, New Sweden, Peach State, Small Wonder, Uncle Sam’s Pocket Handkerchief

District of Columbia

The District

A Capital City, The Federal City

9.      Florida 

Sunshine State

Alligator State, Citrus State, Everglade State, Flower State, God’s Waiting Room, Gulf State, Hurricane State, Manatee State, Orange State, Peninsula State or Peninsular State, Tropical State

10.  Georgia 

Peach State

Cracker State, Empire State of the South,  of the South, Yankee-land of the South, Goober State

11.  Hawaii 

Aloha State

Paradise, The Islands of Aloha, Paradise of the Pacific, Pineapple State, Rainbow State, Youngest State

12.  Idaho  

Gem State

Gem of the Mountanis, Little Ida, Spud State, Potatonia,

13.  Illinois

Land of Lincoln

Prairie State

Corn State, Inland Empire State, Garden of the West

14.  Indiana

Hoosier State

Crossroads of America, Hospitality State, Sunshine State

15.  Iowa  

Hawkeye State

Land of the Rolling Prairie, Tall Corn State

16.  Kansas  

The Wheat State

Sunflower State

America’s Bread Basket, Wheat State, Home of Beautiful Women, Central State, Jayhawker State

17.  Kentucky 

Bluegrass State

Corn-cracker State, The Dark and Bloody Ground State, Hemp State, Tobacco State

18.  Loiusiana  

The Sportsman’s Paradise

Pelican State

Bayou State, Child of the Mississippi, Creole State, Fisherman’s Paradise, Holland of America, Sugar State

19.  Maine 

Vacationland

Pine Tree State

Lumber State

20.  Maryland
Old Line State

Chesapeake State, America in Miniature, Cockade State, Crab State, Free State, Monumental State, Oyster State, Queen State, Terrapin State,

21.  Massachussets 

The Spirit of America

The Bay State

Baked Bean State, Codfish State, The Commonwealth, Old Colony State, Pilgrim State, The People’s Republic of Massachusetts, Taxachusetts

22.  Michigan 

The Greate Lake State

Wolverine State

Mitten State, Winter Water Wonderland, The World’s Motor Capital, America’s High Five

23.  Minnesota 

The North Star State

Butter Country, Gopher State, Land of 10,000 Lakes, Land of Lakes, Land of Sky-Blue Water, New England of the West, State of Hockey, Vikings State, Bread and Butter State

24.  Mississippi

Magnolia State

Hospitality State, The South’s Warmest Welcome, The Birthplace of America’s Music, The Bayou State

25.  Missouri 

Show-Me State

Bullion State, Cave State, Gateway State, Bellwether State, Lead State, The Great Rivers State, Ozark State

26.  Montana 

The Treasure State

Big Sky Country, The Last Best Place

27.  Nebraska 

The Cornhusker State

Beef State, Tree Planter’s State, Blackwater State

28.  Nevada 

Battle Born

Silver State

Battle Born State, Sagebrush State

29.  New Hampshire 

Granite State

The Live Free or Die State, Mother of Rivers, White Mountain State

30.  New Jersey 

Garden State

The Crossroads of the Revolution, The Tomato State

31.  New Mexico 

Land of Enchantment

Cactus State, The Colorful State, Land of Sunshine or Land of Enchantment, New Andalusia, The Outer Space State, The Tex-Mex State, The Spanish State

32.  New York 

The Empire State

Excelsior State

33.  North Carolina 

The Tar Heel State

Old North State, Turpentine State, Variety Vacationland, Rip Van Winkle State, Land of the Sky, First in Flight State

34.  North Dakota 

The Peace Garden State

Flickertail State, Rough Rider State, Sioux State

35.  Ohio 

The Buckeye State

Birthplace of Aviation, Mother of Modern Presidents, The Heart of it All

36.  Oklahoma 

Sooner State

Native America, Land of the Red Man

37.  Oregon 

The Beaver State

Union State, Pacific Wonderland, Sunset State, Webfoot State

38.  Pennsylvania 

The Keystone State

Liberty Bell State, Independence State, Quaker State, Toll Booth State

39.  Rhode Island 

The Ocean State

Little Rhody

40.  South Carolina 

Palmetto State

Sandlapper State, Iodine Products State (disused)

41.  South Dakota 

The Mount Rushmore State (since 1980)

Sunshine State (before 1980), Artesian State, Blizzard State, Coyote State, Land of Infinite Variety

42.  Tennessee 

Volunteer State

Big Bend State, Butternut State, Hog and Hominy State, The Mother of Southwestern Statesmen

43.  Texas 

The Lone Star State

Friendship State, Chili State

44.  Utah 

The Beehive State

Mormon State, Friendly State (in disused), Greatest Snow on Earth

45.  Vermont 

The Green Mountain State

46.  Virginia 

The Dominion State

Mother of Presidents, Mother of States, The Commonwealth

47.  Washington 

The Evergreen State

Apple State

48.  West Virginia 

The Mountain State

Panhandle State

49.  Wisconsin 

America’s Dairyland

Badger State

Cheese State

50.  Wyoming 

Equality State 

Cowboy State, Park State, Like No Place On Earth, Forever West

My first carving. Halloween pumpkin

My first carving was on October 31, 1999.

When I was 12 I made my personal Jack-o’-lantern. 

Nasa

     The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.

     President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

     Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylabspace station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the Space Launch System and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches.

     NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic spacecraft missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories and associated programs. NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, achieving little results in return for high development costs.

     From 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch an artificial satellite for the International Geophysical Year (1957–58). An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard. After the Soviet launch of the world's first artificial satellite (Sputnik 1) on October 4, 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. The US Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to national security and technological leadership (known as the "Sputnik crisis"), urged immediate and swift action; President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisers counseled more deliberate measures. On January 12, 1958, NACA organized a "Special Committee on Space Technology", headed by Guyford Stever. On January 14, 1958, NACA Director Hugh Dryden published "A National Research Program for Space Technology" stating:

     It is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our prestige as a nation as well as military necessity that this challenge [Sputnik] be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space... It is accordingly proposed that the scientific research be the responsibility of a national civilian agency... NACA is capable, by rapid extension and expansion of its effort, of providing leadership in space technology.

     

     While this new federal agency would conduct all non-military space activity, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was created in February 1958 to develop space technology for military application. 

     On July 29, 1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA. When it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA absorbed the 43-year-old NACA intact; its 8,000 employees, an annual budget of US$100 million, three major research laboratories (Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory) and two small test facilities. A NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA. A significant contributor to NASA's entry into the Space Race with the Soviet Union was the technology from the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun, who was now working for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), which in turn incorporated the technology of American scientist Robert Goddard's earlier works. Earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPA's early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a contractor facility operated by the California Institute of Technology.