Maps help to understand how location was important in Daniel’s life, and one area in particular dominated his life in the 40s and 50s, especially because it was the reason Daniel was in White Sands, New Mexico in 1949.
Daniel got involved in rockets because in and around Pasadena, there was lots of rocket related experimentation happening, especially by the founders of Aerojet and at CalTech. Being involved in explosives as a powder man early in his career, it would have been a natural evolution to rockets.
From here [aci.net], some of the founders of Aerojet are mentioned:
“Frank Malina was a graduate student in aeronautics at Cal Tech, and wanted to do a Ph.D. thesis on rocket propulsion. Parsons was a self-taught chemist “with considerable innate ability.” Forman was a rocket engine tinkerer. According to von Karman, both Parsons and Forman had corresponded with the early German and Russian rocketeers and their back yards in Pasadena “were pockmarked from the effects of rocket explosions.”
“During 1936 the local Pasadena paper had carried an article about the possibility of rocket-powered aircraft. The story was based on a seminar given by William Bollay, a graduate assistant to von Karman”
In 1936, Daniel was living just down the road in Monrovia and may have read that article and known of, or met Malina, Parsons and Forman.
The map below shows all the areas in that region important in Daniel’s life during the 30s, 40s and 50s:
Shortly after his arrival in California with his grandmother, they moved to South Pasadena where Daniel attended the now defunct El Centro elementary school. After high-school, Daniel went to the Pasadena library to teach himself about chemistry and explosives which, during the 30s, 40s and 50s, was right in the middle of a hot bed of rocketry experimentation centered around CalTech. Aerojet, which was to employ Daniel during that fateful year of 1949, was officialy formed in 1942 in Azusa (The name is cut off on the right side of the map). Daniel lived in Arcadia and Monrovia, where he got married, and while he worked during the war. He eventually moved to El Monte and West Covina during his golden years at Crescent Engineering and Baldwin Park was where he took his first picture of an alleged UFO!
From here [wikipedia.org] we learn how Aerojet got it’s start:
“Things changed in 1938 when the US Army offered two research projects, one for windshield de-icing on aircraft, and another for rocket engines to launch aircraft (today known as JATO). Dr. Jerome Hunsaker at MIT had the first pick, and feeling that the rocket research was a “Buck Rogers” project, left rockets to the CalTech team. Their first design was tested on August 16, 1941, consisting of a small cylindrical solid fuel motor attached to the bottom of a plane. The takeoff distance was shortened by half, and the USAAC placed an order for experimental production versions. On March 19, 1942 the company was officially formed in Azusa, CA, known as Aerojet Engineering. In 1943 the Air Corps finally placed a full order, demanding that 2000 be delivered before year-end.”
Gives you a good idea of how unimportant rockets where, when windshield de-icing was chosen first by MIT. Makes you wonder if MIT had chosen rockets, if JPL would have be based there?
Cheers, Sean.