Science & Tech
8
On October 31, 1936, at a site approximately 400 yards southeast in the Arroyo Seco River Bed, a group of students and co-workers from the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, encouraged by Dr. Theodore Von Karman, fired their first rocket motor burning gaseous oxygen and methyl alcohol. That test led to the creation of the Galcit Rocket Research Project in 1937, formal government sponsorship of Galcit rocket research in 1939-1940, and the founding of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1944. Participants in the first Galcit rocket test were Frank J. Malina, Edward S. Forman, John W. Parsons, William C. Rockefeller, William A. Bollay, Carlos C. Wood, and Apollo M. O. Smith. In support of inclusion and historical accuracy, the full list of those involved in the tests and research of 1936-38 that gave rise to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory includes founders Weld Arnold, Edward S. Forman, Frank J. Malina, John W. Parsons, Apollo M. O. Smith, and Qian Xuesen, and observers and assistants William and Jeanne Bollay, Nickolas G. Ivanoff, William C. Rockefeller, Rudolph Schott, Phillip E. Saurenman, and Carlos C. Wood.
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