Scope and Content Note
The scrapbooks of the Aero Club of America span the years 1891-1912. The club, founded in 1905 to promote the cause of aeronautics, was interested in the potential represented by flying machines. The collection consists of scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, some of which predate the club’s founding by sixteen years, chronicling the advent of flight by airplane, airship, and other methods.
The collection include two sets of scrapbooks, those of the Aero Club of America and those of Hugh L. Willoughby. Willoughby, an aviation pioneer, was a founder of the organization.
Albert F. Zahm, also a founder of the Aero Club of America and chief of the Library of Congress Aeronautical Division from 1929 to 1946, appears to have obtained these scrapbooks on behalf of the Library.