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In 1936 and 1937 a group of graduate students were working on rocket motor experiments, with guidance from aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán, director of the California Institute of Technology's Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT) and the first director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The students were given no funds or on-campus facilities, so they used their own money to buy instruments and did their testing (which was noisy and potentially dangerous) in an isolated part of Pasadena's Arroyo Seco, about three miles from the Rose Bowl.

The drawing above was created by Frank J. Malina, one of von Kármán's students, and shows the setup used in their rocket motor tests. Malina went on to work as an engineer for JPL and was acting director of the Laboratory during 1944-1946.

For more information about the history of JPL, contact the JPL Archives.

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