As much as I of course also loved Estes' extraordinary product range, I will likely forever lament the unfortunare demise of Centuri as an active manufacturer. There was just something about Centuri (and Enerjet) that connected seamlessly with my own frame of mind. With such confession out of the way, these are some of the truly extraordinary booklets and brochures published by Centuri in the 1970s. It was sometimes challenging for us, who were based in Switzerland, to obtain these publications at the time (as related in various posts in this blog). Moreover, when spending whatever pocket money was available to us, our priority was of course to obtain model rocket kits and motors.
Needless to say, every single one of these releases by Centuri was thus a veritable treasure to us. Not just because of the information contained therein, but also because of the wealth of deeply inspiring photos they presented. This was long before the internet, after all, and the nearly limitless amounts of reference material it offers to today's model rocket enthusiasts.
American Rocketeer was Centuri's house magazine, providing a mixture of company and product news, educational material, and advertising. Volume 4/Number 1 (1970, top row, left) was a prime example, its pages filled with beautiful black & white period photos of real and model rockets. Of note is the announcement, in a small article on page 11, that Centuri Engineering had acquired an 80% interest in a new subsidiary company called Enerjet. The magazine also proudly declares that Centuri's impressive Saturn V model rocket had one advantage over the original: it could be flown repeatedly.
American Rocketeer Volume 5/Number 1 (1971, top row, right) provided more of the same. Most prominent was an article about the Apollo 16 moon mission, followed by an extremely detailed two-page article on scratch-building the large and unusual Uni-Bird model rocket (also shown on the cover). But for us fanatics in Switzerland, starved for anything model rocket related, even just seeing the photo featured as part of the Centuri ad on the back cover amplified our enthusiasm.
Centuri's original Model Rocket Designers Manual (1971, top row, centre left) was one of the publications we frequently saw advertised but never managed to obtain until many years later. It is a small-format guide to all things model rocketry, beautifully illustrated and very comprehensive.
The petite Model Rocket Mini-Manual (1975, top row, centre right) was just a folded flyer included with some of Centuri's kits. It contained only the most important information about model rocketry, but we loved it as an addition to our collections of rocketry items.
The Model Rocket Design Manual (1975, bottom row, left), authored by Grant Boyd, was a large-format, expanded version of the above mentioned Model Rocket Designers Manual. Now printed as a substantial softcover booklet, it served us countless times as a source for new ideas. It contained chapters on techniques, staging, gliding, clusters, scale, displays, odd designs, and much more. Its layout, articles, and photo content also had the (thoroughly intended) effect to make us even more eager to obtain Centuri products.
The fantastic Power-System Handbook Operating Manual (1977, bottom row, centre) recycled some of the Design Manual's material, but it was truly unique in leading the modeller through a cohesive and educational building project involving the X-7 and X-16 modular rockets. And once again, the countless drawings and photos serve make this booklet a joy to browse through, even decades later.
Centuri's Model Rocket Club Guide (bottom row, right) was exactly that, a primer on establishing a model rocket club. Dave Sharma and me preferred to refrain from joining any club at the time (not that there would have been many options), and so the actual value of the Club Guide, to us, was again to be found in the inspiring photographic content.
Photo taken in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 1, 2016.
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