This collection of over six hundred miniature model aircraft shows the evolution of aerospace technology during the 20th century.
From the first biplanes to modern jumbo jets, these models represent a technological transformation that was anything but small.
Donated by aviation enthusiast Eugene Kettering, the son of inventor Charles F. Kettering, the collection reflected his family's fascination with machine technology. Eugene made a career developing diesel locomotives for General Motors, and he collected models of both airplanes and locomotives. He had these aircraft models custom-made out of balsa wood to an exact scale of four millimeters to a foot. Kettering hand-crafted a few of the models himself.
In retirement, Eugene and his wife Virginia became influential philanthropists. He served as the Air Force Museum Foundation's first chairman in 1960, and together they helped raise funds to build a new home for the Air Force Museum (today's Early Years and World War II Galleries), which opened in 1971. To enhance the collection's scope, the Museum added about thirty models in the 1980's.
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