Of Firebirds & Moonmen

Norman J. James

Description

This is a designer’s story from the Golden Age, of Firebirds and Moonmen. It is the author’s story of how, through chance and circumstance, he was to live a 13-1/2 year odyssey, working with the most talented people in General Motors, on two of the most exciting projects that anyone could ever dream of. At GM Styling, under Harley Earl, to become responsible for the design of the Firebird III, the gas turbine experimental car that, half a century later, can arguably be considered the arch-typical representation for the concept car. Then, to follow that, to become involved in the earliest serious development of manned and unmanned vehicles for lunar exploration, and for hardware that rests on the moon today.

The story is told in three parts. First is the early period, where hardships and family bonds temper and condition a polio survivor to abandon his high school preparation, to become a mechanical engineer, and to accept a college scholarship to study Industrial Design, an art curriculum, at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. This period continues, almost as a condensed course, on the fundamentals of design. Key elements evolve around the teachings of mentors Alexander Kostellow and Rowena Reed.

In the second phase, the author is in Detroit and the methods and politics of General Motors Styling, during the height of the Motoramas, are detailed. The design of the Firebird III is the heart of the book and is its reason for existing. As the last surviving member of the four principals in its design (Harley Earl, Bob McLean and Stefan Habsburg being the others), the author feels obligated to assure that the story behind those closed studio doors is told. The story progresses from the Firebird III’s inception, as a Harley Earl vision, through its design and build phase then to its Motorama film production, for presentation in the main ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria.

In the third phase, the author makes a career change, transferring to an aerospace organizational structure and accepting his role as a team player, responsible for carrying out his skills in the support of team objectives. Industrial design, conceptual and drawing skills are applied in the Mechanisms Group for the formulation of mechanical systems on manned and unmanned lunar exploration vehicles. The excitement of realizing that the group was “in on the ground-floor” of lunar exploration is only tempered now by a déjà vu feeling: of realizing that NASA is once again at that same point in time, planning for a return to the moon in 2024.

During this period, the author served under Sam Romano, who would later become the head the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) program, with Dr. Greg Bekker as the Chief Scientist and Ferenc Pavlics as the mobility expert. These people, and others, are the Moonmen.

Of Firebirds & Moonmen is heavily documented with photographs, illustrations and graphics, which were prepared at General Motors as proposal and contract deliverables. They are supplemented with personal photographs and other graphics collected or prepared specifically for the book. All illustrations, corporate and personal, are by the author.

******

The book is a fun read, and many amateurs old enough to remember the early days of spaceflight will relate to the path James followed as a telescope maker and amateur astronomer

-Dennis di Cicco-


SkyandTelescope.com



******

Excerpts from the book are included in GM’s online living history – Generations of GM Wiki, in celebration of their centennial anniversary in 2008. The author’s contribution is on the Firebird III, its inception as defined by Harley Earl and its first "flight," in filming for the 1959 Motorama in Mesa, Arizona.

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Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Horses in warfare
• Biography
• Old
• Aerospace
• Technology
• Autobiography
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 22 mai 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781453594698
• Langue: English

Extrait

Of Firebirds & Moonmen
A Designer’s Story From The Golden Age
 
 
 
 
Norman J. James
 
Copyright © 2007 by Norman J. James.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2007902519
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-4257-7659-6

Softcover
978-1-4257-7653-4

eBook
978-1-4535-9469-8

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Rev. date: 10/06/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris 844-714-8691 www.Xlibris.com 575453
Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1Jamestown
Chapter 2Pratt Institute
Chapter 3Industrial Design
Chapter 4GM Styling
Chapter 5Firebird III
Chapter 6Moonmen
Chapter 7Santa Barbara
Epilogue
 
 
 
 
 
 
In memory of my brother, Herb.
 
 
 
The author wishes to thank the General Motors Corporation, and especially the GM Media Archives, for their permission to use, and assistance in the collection of, photographic and graphic materials that appear in this book and on its covers.
 
Materials from the GM Defense Research Laboratories were prepared for proposal or contract deliverable purposes and are taken from Lunar Sample Return, Surveyor Lunar Roving Vehicle (SLRV), Mobile Lunar Laboratory (MOLAB), Local Site Survey Module (LSSM) and Lunar Wheel and Drive Test documentation.
 
Other graphics that have been created, reconstructed or otherwise prepared especially for this book may be identified by the appended /06 symbol. Unaccredited photographs or graphics that appear in this book are from the author’s personal or family archives. All illustrations in this book are by the author.
 
 
Author’s Note
T his book began in response to a publisher’s request for an article on the design of the General Motors Firebird III gas turbine concept car. The publisher requested that I, as the designer of record, address the elements that I applied in its design and that I note any formal training I may have had, as it would be relevant. I submitted the article as he requested, then waited for a response—which never came. I learned later that his magazine had ceased publication. There was a personal letdown; however, I was glad that—at last—I had collected the material in a semi-structured way. I found myself returning to the draft from time to time, filling in details as memories fell into place, and expanded the scope of the material collected in the process.
I continued looking for linkages in the material, i.e., relationships that may have existed between my training and the design as it was finally executed. This turned out to be very difficult because it appeared that almost everything seemed to have happened more by chance and circumstance than by any coherent process. I also noticed that the content did not end with the Firebird III but logically continued through my final four years with General Motors in Santa Barbara, designing lunar roving vehicles.
That was when I realized that my entire thirteen and a half years with General Motors was an extraordinary period, having had the opportunity to work on projects that one could normally only dream of. As a young man, I had the great fortune of being assigned to the best Styling and Research Staff teams in General Motors, working under Harley Earl and with many other very talented people. The real story, it appeared, was not of the Firebird III but rather of those chances and circumstances that brought it all about.
Within that context, however—as the last surviving member of the principals in its design (Harley Earl, Robert F. McLean, and Stefan Habsburg being the others)—I felt a concurrent obligation to be faithful to the original theme: that of documenting the design of the Firebird III. This occurred almost exactly half a century ago, during General Motors’s golden years , and as a young man, this was truly a designer’s odyssey.
 
—Norman J. James
San Diego, California, March 18, 2007
 
[e-mail]
Prologue
M y parents were both born in Korce, Albania, near the start of the last century. Korce is located in the inland foothills of the Monrovia mountain range, east of the Adriatic Sea and across from the heel of Italy. While still considered a poorly developed country, the region was once a cultural center, some six thousand years ago, during the Copper and Bronze Ages. The earliest known settlers were the Illyrians, who may have been the same people of Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey . The region fell under many cultural influences on up into the sixth century BC, passing through Roman and then Byzantine rule, when Christianity became the official religion.
It was subsequently overrun by Asians, Goths, and Huns (into the eighth century) with invasions continuing by the Slavs, Vikings, Serbians, and most notably the Ottoman (Turkish) empire in 1430 (lasting some five hundred years). The most profound influence of that last invasion was that two-thirds of its populace became Muslim.
There were many unsuccessful uprisings during the Ottoman rule until finally, following the Balkan Wars, in 1912 the Turks were expelled, and Albania, as a nation, became recognized by the world community. My father was born in 1892, near the end of this tumultuous period.
I know very little else of my ancestry, other than my father’s father was a builder of watermills in a highland region comprised mostly of small pastures and where sheep herding was the predominant occupation. While he was still a young man, my father and his younger brother immigrated into the United States, before the outbreak of World War I. They entered through Ellis Island, and my father remained in New York City long enough to learn the tailoring trade. They then moved upstate to the small town of Jamestown, which was one of only a handful of communities in the United States with an Albanian Orthodox Church. There was also a good smattering of Greek, Italian, and Turkish families in the neighborhoods, but Jamestown, a town of forty thousand people, was predominantly Swedish, and furniture manufacture was its main industry.
My father’s first name was Vasile, which was Americanized to Basil. He also changed his surname to James, obviously taken after the town. His brother took on the name of George Miller. They both found work in the downtown Brooklyn Square area, my father as a tailor and his brother as a confectioner.
My mother, Costandina, was ten years younger and did not immigrate until after the war, in the early 1920s, entering as a young lady, accompanying her aunt, uncle, and their two sons. They also settled in Jamestown. Subsequently, my parents met and were married and remained in Jamestown. Basil’s brother George, still single, moved to Westfield, New York, a smaller town some twenty-seven miles northwest and just off Lake Erie, where he opened a restaurant along busy NY Route 20.
Basil became a naturalized U.S. citizen and, in studying for his citizenship, turned into a great student of American history, adapting to and championing everything that was American. Costandina became Constance, but to her Albanian friends, she was always known as Kocha. Her aunt’s and uncle’s names were Sanda and Spiro Semo, and their two boys, who were some fifteen years my senior, were named Peter and Paul. The entire Semo family moved to Meadville, in Northwestern Pennsylvania, some sixty miles south of Jamestown, where they would live and work on a small farm. The boys, having grown up, would open a small shoeshine and hat-cleaning business in town, but they still lived on the farm just outside of town. Their farmhouse, painted a pristine white, was maintained beautifully and would become a regular gathering place for extended family events.
In 1928, my older brother was born and was named Herbert, after the current president, Herbert Hoover. I was born in 1932 and was named after the popular socialist, Norman Thomas. There would be another son, Robert, born in 1936, but he died one year later. The last son, Peter, was born in 1940. We three boys would be raised in Jamestown, four years of age separating Herb and me, and then eight years to Peter. We would grow up, all attending the same schools and living our youth almost entirely in our third house, a well-built three-story with a basement, located on the northeast corner of Seventh and Jefferson.
My father established his tailor shop in the Hotel Samuels servicing that hotel and, then later, picked up all the tailoring for the Hotel Jamestown, both hotels being cross corners from each other on Third and Cherry Streets. It was a short six-block walk from our house to my father’s tailor shop.
The entire period of my youth can be summarized within the small extended family noted here and between the communities of Jamestown, Westfield, and Meadville.
1Jamestown
W e had a simple routine. My father worked in his tailor shop six days a week, and on Sundays, we would visit most often with his brother, our uncle George, in the western part of the state. It was a short pleasant drive along Chautauqua Lake and then